Inspiron 5000 / 7200 rpm 60GB hard drive woes

Question

I installed a Hitachi 60gb, 7200 rpm hard drive into my Inspiron 5000 late in July of 2004. This is the 3rd time I have installed a replacement hard drive into this now 5 year old machine. Built as NTFS.   This drive has been trouble free since the installation, but the fans have been running somewhat more than normal the past month. I think this started shortly after I turned on the acoustic quiet mode.   Last night, Norton Goback kicked up and said there were too many bad sectors, and it needed to recover. I let it do that, and after booting up and logging in, I scheduled chkdsk for the next bootup. I shut down, and when chkdsk ran it reported the following:   Stage 1 said: File record segments 568-571, 8984-8987, 28016-28019, 28232-28235 were unusable.   Stage 2 said: It deleted index entries: DSSBASE.DLL ksolay.ax LSCTRL.DLL 00003114_.LNK BD18212_.wmf BD18213_.wmf BD14869_.gif BD14870_.gif BD14871_.gif   Stage 4 said: Windows replaced bad clusters in file 13623 of name: c:\.......... Also 13725, 21698, 21699, 21701, 21707, 21708, 75203, 75220, 75222, 75223, 75224, 75228, 75234, 75235, 75238, 75240, 75242, 75243, 75244, 75245, 75246, 75249, 75250, 75252, 75255, 75257, 75260, 75263, 75266, 75267, 75272, 75308, 75310, 75312, 75314, 75315, 75316, 75320, 75323, 75327, 75333, 75334, 75339, 75343, 75348, 75514, and on and on (got tired of writing them down!)   I'm torn between two options: 1) Limp along with the current setup, backup often, and run chkdsk frequently to see if any more bad sectors occur. 2) Recover as much data as possible, buy a new system, and sell the old system on ebay. Probably without a hard drive, as I expect there are not enough bad sectors to be covered under warranty. Or scrub the old hard drive, and include it with a stiff caution. 3) Buy a new 60GB hard drive, and use EZ-GIG to do the cloning. That is how I moved to the 60GB 7200 rpm drive in the first place. Any advice or comments would be appreciated. I hate rebuilding systems, as I have lots of applications to install and update..... Thanks! MN

ejn63 · Answer

Nix option 1 - it's just a matter of a (short, most likely) period of time before the drive fails completely.

The drive should have a 3-year warranty with Hitachi. Run the Hitachi DFT on it, record the error, and RMA it for replacement.

bacillus · Answer

I suspect that your observation of your fans running somewhat more than normal is an indication that there is accumulated dust and debris on your heatsink leading to overheating.

Too high an ambient temperature can have adverse effects on your hard drive leading to premature failure. As such it may be prudent to try cleaning your heatsink by blowing your vents out with a can of compressed air.

meganerd · Answer

Thanks to both of you for the good advice.   I think the lowest pain (in terms of effort on my part) though not the cheapest path is to:   1) Clean the vents out with compressed air.   2) Get a 60GB 5400rpm drive (around $90) and clone the system onto that, using my existing EZ-GIG kit. That spares me a LOT of effort reloading data and reinstalling software. (I used the EZ-GIG to move to the current drive.)   3) Run the disk check, use a data cleaning utility, and send it back to Hitachi. Either keep the replacement as a spare (and periodically clone the system onto it), or ebay it....   Any suggestions on brand? I see WD has mobile drives, and I have been using WD in my desktops...   Thanks again, MN

ejn63 · Answer

Go with Seagate.

Storage, Drives & Media

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