Dell Inspiron 1520 Error requesting to reseat hard drive

Question

I replaced the hard drive about three months ago. Now, about once every two weeks, I get a hard drive clicking noise. I get the noise for about two minutes, then I get the screen message that the hard drive isn't found and to reseat it. I shut down the laptop, reboot and all is well for one to two weeks. I ran the complete suite of hard drive diagnostic tools from Seagate and everything shows normal. If I had a bad new hard drive, shouldn't this be an every day problem? I replaced the drive due to an OE Dell 80 gig drive that died. I replaced it with a 500 gig Seagate, could that be the error problem? I don't remember ever having this problem with the old drive. Could the motherboard be going out? After replacing the drive, I would get a black screen saying the power level was incorrect and might not charge correctly. I found a replacement a/c adaptor and that was solved, for the most part. I do get an occassional same message about the power, not often. I can live with this problem but I hate a problem that keeps showing up, even if it is every two weeks. I would appreciate any help I can get on this.

tpickett · Answer

Hi: Thanks for your answer. I did not get the drivers and utilities disc as I bought the laptop off of Ebay. Is there a way to get another copy of this disc? Thanks again.

Mary G · Answer

You should mention your operating system. Windows XP and older laptops can have a problem with hard drives that are much larger than the original. You should consider that this is the problem. It would have been better to have replaced the drive with a 120gb drive maximum instead of the 500gb. Oversized drives eventually fail. This could be the cause of the error message.

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