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15531
March 5th, 2008 06:00
Hard drive problem or computer problem?
My Inspiron 6000 one day starting giving me the "Read failure on internal hard drive" message when I turned it on. I ran the Dell diagnostics and got error codes 0f00:0248, 0f00:1348, and 0f00:131B. After talking to Dell tech. support, I was told that the hard drive was bad. I bought a new hard drive from Dell, and this new hard drive seemed to be bad too (I couldn't format it when I tried to install XP, and it failed the IDE disk confidence and read tests when I ran the diagnostics). After sending that hard drive back, I bought a new hard drive. And I'm getting exactly the same problems as with the first new hard drive.
When I run XP setup (with the new hard drive installed), I get to a screen that shows existing partitions and unpartitioned space on the computer. I have an 80 GB drive, but in the box at the bottom it shows "7931 MB Disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 0 on atapi [MBR]" and shows that I have 7930 MB unpartitioned space (I'm not leaving off a zero--shouldn't this show something closer to 80000 MB?). When I try to format the partition (either as NTFS or FAT, and no matter how big or small I make the partition), it gets all the way through formatting, then I get the message:
"Setup was unable to format the partition. The disk may be damaged.
Make sure the drive is switched on and properly connected to your computer. If the disk is a SCSI disk, make sure your SCSI devices are properly terminated."
When I run the diagnostics, every test passes except two: the IDE disk confidence test (error code 0f00:1348) and the IDE disk read test (error code 0f00:0248).
A couple other things: the device info part of the BIOS setup shows that my primary hard drive is 71 GB (so I know my computer is recognizing it as bigger than just 7930 MB). And when I go into the recovery console in the XP setup program (which puts me at a DOS prompt), typing "dir" at c:\> gives me the message "An error occured during directory enumeration" and chkdsk gives me "The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems" (Are these error messages because the drive isn't formatted?).
What are the chances that I've just had really really bad luck and have had two brand-new hard drives that were bad (in addition to the original hard drive that appeared to be bad, but never gave any indication of failing)? Otherwise, what might be to blame? What else should I try? My warranty expired a year ago, so I can't just send it back for repair.
Many thanks.
When I run XP setup (with the new hard drive installed), I get to a screen that shows existing partitions and unpartitioned space on the computer. I have an 80 GB drive, but in the box at the bottom it shows "7931 MB Disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 0 on atapi [MBR]" and shows that I have 7930 MB unpartitioned space (I'm not leaving off a zero--shouldn't this show something closer to 80000 MB?). When I try to format the partition (either as NTFS or FAT, and no matter how big or small I make the partition), it gets all the way through formatting, then I get the message:
"Setup was unable to format the partition. The disk may be damaged.
Make sure the drive is switched on and properly connected to your computer. If the disk is a SCSI disk, make sure your SCSI devices are properly terminated."
When I run the diagnostics, every test passes except two: the IDE disk confidence test (error code 0f00:1348) and the IDE disk read test (error code 0f00:0248).
A couple other things: the device info part of the BIOS setup shows that my primary hard drive is 71 GB (so I know my computer is recognizing it as bigger than just 7930 MB). And when I go into the recovery console in the XP setup program (which puts me at a DOS prompt), typing "dir" at c:\> gives me the message "An error occured during directory enumeration" and chkdsk gives me "The volume appears to contain one or more unrecoverable problems" (Are these error messages because the drive isn't formatted?).
What are the chances that I've just had really really bad luck and have had two brand-new hard drives that were bad (in addition to the original hard drive that appeared to be bad, but never gave any indication of failing)? Otherwise, what might be to blame? What else should I try? My warranty expired a year ago, so I can't just send it back for repair.
Many thanks.
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ejn63
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March 5th, 2008 10:00
vmelkon
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March 5th, 2008 13:00
dh80
3 Posts
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March 5th, 2008 21:00
Is there anything I can do to find what's causing this problem? At what point do I give up and take the computer to a professional? And now that I know the hard drive is ok (but the computer is having trouble dealing with the hard drive), what area of this forum does my problem fall under?
Thanks.
dh80
3 Posts
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March 5th, 2008 22:00
In the BIOS setup, it's been showing that I have a 71 GB HDD (instead of 80). I just reseated the RAM, and the BIOS setup suddenly showed an 80 GB HDD. But then I went into XP setup and recovery console, and got the same message with chkdsk as before. And at the point in XP setup where it shows the existing partitions, it still showed that there was about 7933 MB of space. Now the BIOS setup is showing 71 GB for the HDD again.