Hard Drive Failure

[Drew Wilson]

To continue on where another thread was going off topic, I think I figured out what was happening to my laptop.

Looks like it was a hard drive failure. I had a BSOD and it spat out a stop code ending in 7A. I tried to grab my camera and snap a picture of the screen to capture the other codes, but I was a split second too slow (it, as usual, failed to do that data dump)

So, being annoyed, I left the laptop to boot back up as usual, but when I came back, the laptop apparently failed to boot. It had a few windows asking me if I'd like to attempt to do repairs. Reading the screen, I quickly knew that it was going to attempt to do a system restore. Sweet! I hadn't installed anything in a long time and everything I had installed was replaceable, I let it start the repair process. If it was a software problem, there's a chance that it could fix that problem.

The laptop boots up normally and I'm thinking, "Great! Maybe this will fix the problem."

No dice. One of the proggies that came with the laptop told me that the hard drive is about to fail. FFFFF-!!!!

So... I grab an external hard drive and am in the process of backing EVERYTHING up. After about a half an hour of backing things up, Windows is telling me that the hard drive is about to fail. So, I've concluded that it is definitely a hard drive failure. Funny thing was that I was actually thinking of also finding SpinRite (sp?) to see if it was a hard drive issue.

Once I back up everything I need to back up, the next step is to de-install everything. I want to make everything as easy as possible. Clear out my browser cache to wipe any personal data out that could be there. As a last measure, I'm thinking of nuking the temp folder on top of it all. It's probably everything short of formatting the hard drive.

I dug around, looking for my receipt. I was curious to know how long the hard drive lasted. Turns out, it's only just over a year old. There's a remote possibility it might be under warranty still, but hard to tell.

Also trying to figure out what would cause the hard drive to fail so quickly. I'm aware that BitTorrent (and probably eMule) puts a lot of wear and tear on the drive, but I've done this sort of activitiy on other hard drives and never (until now) had a hard drive fail like that. My best guess is that it was a manufacturing defect (possibly why Toshiba stopped selling this model when I bought the thing)

Anyway, thanks for all your help guys. I wouldn't have known to read stop codes if it weren't for you're help. Definitely appreciated.

[w31n3r]

yeah, i've had several konk out on me this year alone. they just don't make them like they used to :(

it seems to me that the higher capacity disks are more prone to failure. i've had 2 1.5TB and a 2TB disk fail within months of purchase, while my trusty 160GB drive is still going strong since 2005!! i'm short of money this year but one thing i will be asking santa is for a couple of SSDs this Christmas XD

[Krell]

If it was previously indicated that your BSOD was on a laptop where you were running BT I would have answered differently.

A 2.5" drive is not a 3.5" drive for any number of reasons, besides just being smaller.

Doing excessive read\write operations on a 2.5" drive is not advised. The constant seek and lack of HD cooling on a laptop does not make for a survivable BT machines. (now say this again to yourself again 3 more times)

DREW - Your best bet is to stop using it for an O/S, right now, at this very moment, stop using it. Don't monkey with spinright and let it arbitrarily do or correct anything. go to the mfr website and check the serial to see if it is still under warranty.

Secondly, BUY AN SSD drive. There's no excuse in the day and age for someone with a job not to buy an SSD for their boot drive. Buy a CRUCIAL 120g drive and get it in route to you. If your laptop has a 2nd HD bay, then buy another SSD for that bay also.

(these would be internal drives and not used for BT)

The failing drive can be cabled to a desktop SATA port where the BIOS can recognize it, and in Windows you can Start > Run > CMD > chkdsk (drive letter): /f

Once the checkdisk is completed and it fixes any errors, then you can try to copy the files off to another drive on the desktop system.

If you want to use a laptop for BT, then use a couple of small portable drives on USB. Buy one for incoming and one for completed.

And you folks with dekstops, buy 2 SSD drives for your O/S and put them in RAID-0

:D

.

[Drew Wilson]

The only thing it's doing is backing up all of my data. Currently using a borrowed desktop ATM. Since I had a previous laptop fail because of lack of a decent heat sink (it was apparently a common problem), I actually bought a cooling pad for it to help keep the laptop cool. Since buying this one, I just put the cooling pad under the new one thinking it wouldn't hurt anything.

*sighs* I never was a hardware guy to begin with. Might see about moving my BT activities over to the borrowed desktop (as long as I ask reeeeeaally nicely) to help with keeping the next hard drive from self-destructing. :\

[Drew Wilson]

Holy crap! I could almost write a book on cleaning out a hard drive.

Put all personal data onto external, deleted originals, backed up project files, deleted originals, backed up other things, deleted originals, de-installed craploads of proggies, re-deinstalled some proggies, deleted directories where de-installation wizard wouldn't clean out everything, went in to the downloads directory, cleaned that out, went in to the MyDocuments directory and cleaned out some program libraries that the de-installation prog's missed, cleaned out the browser history for three different browsers, de-installed two and ticked all of the 'clean out personal info' in the process to make sure it was removed. Even reset the theme on that thing. Pretty much an all evening process. Not sure what else I can do to remove every last fingerprint off of that hard drive. I'd be quite impressed if you could get a whole lot out of that drive now. I'd be impressed if you could lift any product keys or banking information off of that thing short of a forensic scan on that thing (that would require several sweeps of wiping everything out, but I've only gone as far as I have gone in the (ulikely) event that the Hard Disk can be repaired somehow.

Probably being overly paranoid since there really wasn't anything on the drive that was bad, but it was quite an excercise in cleaning out a Windows box.

[Krell]

Would have been easier to just copy off what you needed and put the drive on the grill for a while.

Are you planning on sending it in for an RMA?

[Drew Wilson]

The hard drive is most likely going to be replaced as I pretty much helped rule out a software problem by removing everything. I actually turned in the laptop already and was relieved that it was still under warranty (clear in to the middle of 2012 no less)

The interesting part was that the worker said he was surprised my hard drive lasted as long as it has. I'm still not sure how to read a response like that. I'm torn between him knowing everyone uses BitTorrent and no one knows that BT shreds hard drives or laptop hard drives fail at a frequency I wasn't aware of.

He was quite happy when I handed him the recovery disc's, then looked at them and said, "Hey... that's my handwriting!" (clever if he was just trying to keep the customer happy, coincidental if he was serious)

Unless something else happens that I'm not aware of, it looks like the rest of the laptop will be returned to me as before. As this is the first time I handed in a laptop for repair, I'm curiously waiting to see how things go from here.

And, yes, I'm also hoping I can get the warranty extended if the hard drive is going to fail every year.

[Krell]

I suppose, and I'm being greacious here, that if you can get the repair done under warranty with no cost to you, and you get a new HD with an OS on it, then it's mildy convenient.

IMHO . . . I think you should order the SSD drive(s) and use the one he gives you in a removeable case. Buy another one and use one for incoming and one for outgoing.

Removeable Drive-A always reads and then transfers to removeable Drive-B, then Drive-B always writes, unless files are being accessed ot you're copying through the network to another location.

I just can't see doing P2P on the same HD as the OS, on a laptop. Either (imho) this is a grossly unrealistic expectation, or you don't do P2P anywhere on the order that I do.

Be kind to the little drives . . . treat them like the dainty little 2.5" mechanical object they are, and take it easy on them.

Plus the SSD drive will make your whole laptop experience much better.

Also, mo matter what happens to resolve this by getting your laptop back, you should use the Driver Genius and the Intel site and get all the drivers updated.

.

[Drew Wilson]

Whew! Finally on my own laptop again. Felt like this lack of laptop thing was taking eternity! Woohoo!

[Wikied]

I dont think your failure was due to bt (torrents), because the way the repairman answered you it sounds like it was a known defect on that model of laptop.

Im glad to hear you are back up and running on your lappy, congrats :)