Two-month old hard drive died. Can you tell me why?

Just got a new computer for my brother about 2 months ago and already it has problems. It's built with all new no-name parts. It was the value system at the store we bought it from.

Anyway, the hard drive died. His apartment is very, very hot now that it is almost summer. We recently had a major heat wave here in Southern Ontairo Canada, and I'm thinking that that might have caused the hard drive to over heat and die so soon. It was 40 degrees with the humidity for 6 days straight and in his apartment was super hot. He has no air conditioning or central air in his place.

Could the combination of cheap computer parts and very high temperatures cause such an early death for a hard drive?

I'm not giving out the computer specs because it's more of a general question about the quality of computer parts and extreme temperatures.

 

Sorry. Wrong section. Can someone put this in the hardware section please.

 

has the drive been properly diagnosed as 'dead'? -- have you run a manufacturers diagnostic tool on the drive? tested it in another computer? if not, perhaps the motherboard is faulty/ corrupted IDE controller?

i'd be shocked if the drive was truly dead. Hard drives run better when cool, obviously, but its far more likely that another component would go first due to heat....

I'm curious, who makes the drive?

 

The hard drive is dead. Everything else works. I put the hard drive in my computer and ran tests on it. Huge parts of the hard drive are unreadable and damaged. I tried to format the hard drive while hooked up to my computer (with my hard drive in it of couse) but because of the damage formating could not be done. I put the hard drive back into my borthers computer and tried to format the hard drive using the windows xp cd but I get the blue screen of death everytime I try.

It doesn't say on the hard drive who makes it and I can't remember what my computer said the name of it was when it was in my computer. It's a no-name piece of crap as far as I'm concerned.

My borthers apartment is very hot in the summer and I want to know if getting a top-of-the-line hard drive, like a Maxtor or something, would be able to survive the heat or die like the no-name piece of crap?

 

A top quality HD might do better, but I suspect you are beyond the temp and humidity specs for most of the parts, so if not the drive, then perhaps the power supply or memory will go out. It's not unheard of for a component to fail after a couple of months. Have you contacted the store? If enough systems are failing, they may have a recall.

Your weather issues would seem to be common for many parts of the world. Have you googled on the topic of PCs and keeping them running in severe conditions?

 

I havn't done the google thing yet. I wanted the 'Geeks' opinion first.

The place I got it from said I'd have to bring the computer in and they'd send the hard drive to the manufacturer to determine if it is broken. If it's broken they'll send a new one. If it's fixable I'll get the drive back. All of it is covered in the warranty but it'll take 3 weeks!

Should have gotten a Dell!

 

40*c is not too hot for HDD, it maybe help you alittle
a/ take out the HDD board and Clean it
b/ put it in and plug 5/12v HDD Jack in take HDD on hand, shake it lightly, did you fell your hand follow HDD shaking -> the motor HDD run good
c/ shut down computer, put HDD on case or table, put some fingers on your HDD and turn power on. Did you fell likely alittle knock and HDD motor run not stable, that mean HDD heads work good
the last one is HDD board. you should check it in bios.
HDD board can be died by dirty.

 

Thanks for the suggestions, A.Son, but the hard drive is dead. I'm sure of it. I'm just going to take it back and wait the 3 weeks. I should gets some fans too.