Inspiron E1405 Hard Drive Error Code 2000-0146

The drive electronics are failing the self-test - yes, replace the drive ASAP.

Do I need to buy a Dell E1405 hard drive or can I purchase any laptop hard drive?

Does it need to be a Dell hard drive or can I get any laptop hard drive?

Any 2.5" 9.5 mm SATA notebook  drive will work.

I also received that error, but the hard drive was failing because the bios settings had somehow changed so it wasn't reading the drive properly.  The bios setting had been changed from a SATA drive to an AHCI sata.  I changed the settings, deleted all partitions and started from scratch.  It's been running just fine ever since. 

Hi,

I have been unable to boot my laptop in window. Could you tell how can one check the BIOS setting and change it.

Thanks,

Saeer

F2 at powerup to get into the BIOS;  F12 gets you to the menu that brings up the Dell diagnostics.

I found this thread searching 2000-0146 error code, i went into my bios and saw i too was set to ahci vs ata, i have a new wd hd due to dell diagnostics telling me the original hd was bad (same error code), and yet the brand new drive gives same error code in dell diagnostics!

So decided to search a bit, found this thread, and saw the talk about the settings of ahci to ata in bios.

Went in and changed mine to ata - saved/exited and am going to now delete the partition, reinstall vista and drivers and see if this works, will also re run the diagnostic tests too to see if it still gives me that same code again.

Interestingly i took the new drive out and hooked it upto my main pc, installed the western digital lifeguard diagnostics and ran it for 6 hrs extended test, drive shows as pass and healthy, so makes me wonder why dell diag is showing it as error 2000-0146, maybe it is that bios settting - sure hope so will report back once i get the reinstall and re testing done...

Man i hope this fixes it...

Didnt fix it like i hoped, this is a new drive from dell (wd 500gb) but heck guess it could be a bad one just seems odd for a new drive to be bad what are the odds maybe less than 3% im guessing?  Maybe the motherboard has something funky going on heck i dunno but still getting that 2000-0146 error code every time i test the drive in dells diagnostics mode..

When I got this error 2000-0146, i tried to change BIOS setting; I was not able to change it. SO what I ended up doing was to reinstall window again (Window XP). After reinstallation, everything works fine.

I did the opposite of this! I turned off the flash setting in the BIOS then enabled ATA!!

   For months, my inspiron continued to reboot itself {never allowing me to access Windows} and after running the diagnostic test last night and error code 2000-0146 popped up, I tried the advice given by FTLOSM. Unlike FTLOSM, I found that my bios setting was set to ATA vs AHCI. After changing this, my computer finally completed a system restore test without rebooting itself during the middle of it.

  Yet much to my dismay, this simply did not fix my problem. After the test, a screen identifying that the problem couldn't be fixed automatically popped up. I had to click "advanced diagnostics options"  (which is one of the links the system restore gives you when the problem cannot be fixed automatically- not so sure if that's the exact wording) , then clicked the Emergency Backup and Restore option (which saved all of my photos, documents, and music to an Emergency Back up Folder), after about two hours of restoration I had to restart and then go back to BIOS setting {which can be accessed by pressing F 2} and had to once again change it from ATA to AHCI. Then restart once more and wah-lah I could access Windows.

  After setting up my computer and having to restart (again), the Emergency Back-Up folder popped up on my desktop which I clicked on and retrieved all of my old things back into their original places.

I hope this helps someone who is having the same problem...

If you have had the drive for more than a couple of years, consider Gibson SpinRite to reformat the drive in place.

All you wonderful people out there and especially AMBURGULARR: Thank you so much!

I received this error more than a week back and was in a state of dilemma and depression since I was told by so many people that my hard drive would have crashed and that all my data is lost and I need to get a new hard drive. I had no problems in that except the loss of data. The data was extremely precious to me and my folks. In fact, priceless. Well, went ahead and started searching if I could get a solution on the net and incidentally came across this thread. Gave me a huge sense of positivity and confidence to try one of these solutions before taking the laptop to a service centre. To my surprise, my problem turned out exactly as that of AMBURGULARR.

So, I kept following the words of AMBURGULARR like a user guide and finally was able to get my machine up and running last night with all my data, files, music and videos backed up through the Emergency Backup and Restore tool.

Once again, Thank you so much for helping me out.

Cheers, GJOLLY