Inspiron 6000 Hard Drive

Question

The 60 gig hard drive in my inspiron 6000 is definitely dieing.  The laptop is only 4 months old and xp started reporting Delayed Write Errors and it started having blue screens of death.  I ran chkdsk /r on reboot to hopefully stave off defeat of the hard drive.  I kept the thing going for about a week before the drive basically corrupted the main and restore partitions to the point the machine wouldn't boot.   So, I got on the online chat with Dell support and after going through the steps, the support person stated that indeed the hard drive is bad.  Then he says that this is not covered under warranty because I had bad sectors reported when I ran chkdsk before it failed completely...!!!!  But wait, isn't that what happens when a drive goes bad?!  He said it was a usage issue?????? I guess I should have never used my laptop.  That is garbage, he must have misunderstood the problem or something.  Now I have at least gotten my own install of XP up and running after low level formatting the drive and wiping the restore partition (which took FOREVER because of the bad drive).  The drive is still sick though and this install of XP is fading (scandisk reporting errors after every reboot or not being able to finish etc...), so now I could at least run some diagnostics with dell support if that is what is required.   Basically, I want to know what I should do about this, because this IS a warranty issue and I am supremely frustrated.   EDIT:  I have always been happy with Dell and its support, I just don't want my image of the company to change as a result of this. Message Edited by dwyerpe on 12-05-2005 10:23 PM

Kiyoyuki_Takeda · Answer

I believe that it's the maker of the hard drive that produces a not-so-reliable hard drive. Can you please tell me the maker of your hard drive because I believe there are updates avaliable on the support website.   Btw: I also own a Dell Inspirion 6000 laptop with a 80GB Hitachi Hard Disk (no wonder all my Western Digital hard disk updates won't work!). I've used it for 2+ months and it does not show any visible problem (probably it's the hard disk Dell uses for the newer models). I'm a new user of a Dell Computer so bear with me. Message Edited by Kiyoyuki_Takeda on 12-05-2005 11:31 PM

dwyerpe · Answer

Thanks for the help.  It's a toshiba 60 gig so those WD updates probably wont work.  My issue is that regardless of the drives reliability, it is well within the one year warranty and I know of people that have had the same exact issue with an inspiron and the drive was replaced immediately by dell without the run-around. Message Edited by dwyerpe on 12-05-2005 11:55 PM

bacillus · Answer

Assuming that you are still within warranty, I would run the Dell diagnostics program making a note of whatever error(s) it picks up for your hard drive then give Dell another call quoting the error message(s) and asking for a new hard drive.

ramiss · Answer

dwyerpe,  your hard drive is most probably dieing due to structural damage. If the bad sectors are growing and accumulating then you most probably have some grit riding around inside the disk platter. No amount of drivers or reformatting will stop the inevitable demise of this drive.   You are absolutely correct that the symptoms you experienced is 'happens when a drive goes bad'. Any decent tech will be able to tell you that. My advise is to get back with Dell and fight your way to, and ask for, a level 2 or 3 tech who actually knows something and isn't just reading from a checklist.   Richard

dwyerpe · Answer

I was able to run dell diagnostics.  I then got on dell chat with another tech and it was a completely different interaction.  I quoted the error messages and the guy jumped straight to 'I am going to replace your hard drive', it all took about 20 minutes.  So I am much happier now :).  I think the first guy was new and was having a bad day or something, but oh well, at least it is resolved.   Thanks for the help, Paul

Kiyoyuki_Takeda · Answer

Usually Dell Diagnostics can be run without Windows booting up, so make use of that, especially for new users.   But I've heard that once you return your unit to Dell for repair you might have to wait for about 2 weeks to get your unit back. Is that true?

dwyerpe · Answer

Actually, they sent me a new hard drive in the mail to replace and it showed up in the mail in about 5 days.  I figure I could have hassled and gotten it over night if I had wanted to.  The only problem is the guy said he would have the dell image put on the hard drive (useful because I wanted the Dell diagnostics on there already so I wouldn't have to worry about trying to create that partition manually) but the drive came completely blank.

Storage, Drives & Media

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