You need a new hard drive - any 2.5" 9.5 mm SATA notebook drive will work.

hi. i have the same problem with my inspiron 1501 and get msg error code: 0146...where can i get a 2.5" 9.5 mm SATA notebook drive?

newegg.com is a good source.

thanks. but why would my PC need a new hard drive i don't have any music, video, or pictures, programs saved on my laptop? only use it for the Internet. still don't understand why i get that msg error code 0146, message error code 2000-0146 when i try to diagnose my pc when windows doesnt start correctly. sometimes it turns on without any trouble and at times i get this msg. please help! not computer literate

It makes no difference what you use the computer for - when it's turned on, the hard drive is needed to start up the operating system and run the computer.  Like any electromechanical device, a hard drive can fail at any time - may be after two hours, two days, two years or two decades - but they all fail eventually.

You likely have a drive where sectors are going bad - sometimes they may be readable, sometimes not. But it's just a matter of time before the drive fails completely.

Replace the hard drive.

So is there anyway I can save my pictures and files....

lisa, what you could try is to remove the drive, place it in an external usb 2.0 caddy (making sure whether your hard drive is ide or sata and buying accordingly), and attaching to another computer via usb.  You may be lucky and be able to rescue your data. There is data recovery software which you could google for, I'm afraid I have no recommendations. I hope you get your data back, but in future when your computer is up and running back up anything that is important to you.

This happened to my harddrive (about a year and a half old) last year and I replaced it over the summer with a new one from dell, back when my computer was under warranty. Now, the warranty has expired but my computer had been freezing a lot and I just ran the diagnostic test only to find the same error message. My computer seems to be working fine except that it freezes a TON for minutes at a time, and then will go back to completely normal for 20 minutes until it happens again.

I was wondering if it's possible that another part of my computer (again, not computer literate) could be affecting my harddrive and causing this failure for both consecutive harddrives, or if the error message could imply something else that I'm missing?

Cheers

Simon

The two biggest killers of hard drive are heat and shock - if the system is overheating  it can drastically shorten the drive life.  So too can shock, particularly when the drive is spinning.