mfinnan101

Yes, the hard drive has failed and needs to be replaced.

If the computer is under warranty, contact Dell Technical Support for a replacement. No warranty, you need to buy a 3.5" SATA 7200rpm hard drive, replace the drive and reload windows, drivers and applications, or clone the exsisting hard drive to the replacement. Both Seagate and Maxtor hard drives have an excellent free cloning utility, based on Arconis TrueImage available.

Bev.


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Thanks for the advice.

As far as I know the warranty is gone, so it's time for a new Hard Drive. 

Is it possible to set up a RAID 1 array on the desktop? 

mfinnan101

Yes, the E310/3100 supports RAID1.

The procedures for setting up RAID1, start on page 25 of the E310/3100 Service Manual.

The discussion here may be helpful.

As noted, the plastic tray and data cable for the second hard drive would be required.

Bev.


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Thanks very much Bev.

mfinnan101

Pleased to have helped.

Bev.


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I purchased my Dimension 4700 in Dec 04.Loads of problems right from the start.Dells response was very poor.Eventually blue screen of death Jan 07.Contacted Dell who went through a procedure with me which identified a failed hard drive.Maxtor.

This was replaced quite quickly.I feel that I have now another failed hard drive because having run the diagnostic myself I am getting       Hard Drive   ST-----------AS - Fail       Return Code = 7

My questions are: are there any other tests I can run to assure myself that the hard drive really has failed and that there is not a problem elsewhere?

When I start the machine Windows XP starts to load and when it gets to the desktop with f2 /f12 on it ,there is a very slight click and a screen appears with the Windows start up options on it.(safe mode,last best etc)

clicking Start Windows Normally shuts the machine off and then restarts, eventually stopping at the options page,and so on.

 My second question:If my hard drive is to be replaced is this possible without the involvement of Dell.

 I have all the original discs supplied with the machine.This includes Dells Windows XP.

 It would do a lot for my confidence if I can get this machine running again with the assistance of some good advice.Thanks

Hi Cutswood,

 

The test that the drive is performing via Dell's suggestion is the Drive Self Test.  This will perform some key tests on the drive to give you a warm and fuzzy about it being good.  In the case where it reports and "07 or 7" then it has failed for and "uncorrectable read" error.  If you're not concerned with the data that's on the drive currently then I would suggest that you get a utility from the associated hard drive supplier that would write the entire drive.  This will do two things and give you a much better idea if the drive needs to be replaced.  When the "uncorrectable" block gets overwritten it will either recertify that location (meaning it's good, something happened before when it was writing) or it will reallocate (meaning that it can't write that location and will retry until it exhausts then it will write to another location).  One bad block on a drive is easy to live with after it's been reallocated, but 300, 500 or 5000 reallocations will start to degrade performance and reduce reliability.

 

If the drive is a Seagate or Maxtor then you could download Seatools from the Seagate site and it will not only tell you how many "uncorrectables" you have, but it will tell you what files are associated with those defects.  The software will also ask your permission to overwrite the bad locations with "0"s so that you can potentially boot your system again.

 

As far as letting your system boot normally now and it rebooting.  Choose "disable automatic restart on error" from the Windows Startup Menu (pressing F8 at the Dell Logo will invoke the menu).  That will at least allow the system to get to the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) and show you "unmountable boot volume" message or some random "STOP" error.

cutswood

Error Code 7 means the drive has failed it's self-test, you need to replace the hard drive and reload windows XP.

There's no need to obtain the replacement from Dell, any 3.5", 7200rpm SATA hard drive will be fine. Check out the lenght of the warranty, Seagate's hard drives have five years.

How to replace 

<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>

the hard drive.

Dell's instructions for reinstalling XP are here.

Bev.


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Bev and Ryan

Thank you for your advice.

I did what you suggested,it was the hard drive.

New hard drive purchased,fitted and machine working.Very satisfactory outcome.Very happy.

Keep up your good work

Eric

Eric.

I'm happy to hear that the problem is resolved. :)

Have a great weekend.

Bev.


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