hard drive/help please

im 99% sure that my hard drive is going out..ill give you the symptoms and could you let me know what you think?..i have had to reformat 3 times now bcuz windows either would not load or got corrupted..my hard drive makes wierd clicking and humming sounds and when that happens the computer freezes up...sometimes it takes a few reboots just to get windows to load..its a miracle that i can get the chance to ask this question...what do you people think?

 

o yeah i forgot something..i get the blue screen with kernal/inpage/data/error a few days after every reformat...thats when i know its gonna crash completly...

 

one last question..i have a compaq presario home computer..its a basic computer and i need to know what kind of hard drives i can install..just wondering if anyone knows..can i install any old hard drive and my bios will figure it out?

 

where are the experts? can anyone help me out? whats the best performing and most reliable hard drive thats under 100 bucks??? please let me know asap...

 

The clicking and humming noises are the read/write heads contacting the platters in your hard drive or you have a mass amount of damaged sectors on the hard drive in question.
Any of the major brand names should be fine with your computer ( Maxtor, Western Digital, Seagate ). Just be sure to choose one with a hard drive connector that your motherboard supports. I'm assuming that you use IDE and not SATA, so get one that says IDE on the box.

 

thanks novice....is there anyway to repair this hard drive using chkdsc or something like that? what brand is better quality in your opinion?

 

If the hard drive is already damaged to this point, then total failure isn't far off. There are tools that you can try ( most manufacturers offer utilities to zero their hard drives to facatory shipped condition, I use an earlier version of Maxtor's that writes 0"s to all the sectors on the hard drive, and have good luck with it. ), but my advice is to buy a new hard drive! My own personal preference is either Maxtor or Western Digital.

 

thanks novice...my hdd is so basic/oldschool that its on the discontinued hdd list at samsung and there are 0 files for it...lol it sucks..so doing a checkdisc with fix bad sectors or whatever wont do much? im lucky its even working after 3 formats.im scared to do anything to it to piss it off..but ill try anything if it helps=)

 

i have windows-xp-home......will scandisk/repair bad sectors do anything to help my hard drive? .....whats the best quality hard drive for under $100?

 

speed bump..anyone got some information for me??? please

 

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-140-133&depa=1
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-152-008&depa=1
http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-145-068&depa=1

 

Not likely. Most of those utilities are designed to fix logical damage, not physical damage. They don't "fix" a bad sector; they just mark it out and move the data off the bad sector so that the bad sector isn't used.

Strange noises from the drive are usually a sign of physical damage. Contact between a read head and the platter surface usually causes damage to the platter that is not repairable except in the manufacturer's facilities. It's not usually worth the cost of doing so.

If you want to check the drive out, run a surface scan. If you get any bad sectors at all, that means that the drive has already used up its spare sectors. At that point, the drive should be considered unreliable. Make a note of the number of bad sectors, and run the drive for a couple of days. If the number of bad sectors increases, back up any data that you wouldn't like to lose, and replace the drive ASAP. The drive is on its way out.

 

thanks so much doods for the information...one last question...my hard drive seems to be running normal for the last 2 days..am i just lucky for now or what do you think is going on??...i have had to format this drive 3 times now bcuz of it failing...

 

actually my first format was the normal version and that failed after a few days and my latest was quick bcuz i didnt think the hard drive would last more than a few days...both times i lose all info bcuz i have no way to backup anything..hehe..o well nothing of vital importance...just takes a while to update everything with dial-up modem=(..i guess ill try my luck this time around and if it fails again ill just buy a new hd..i was surprised that you can buy a hard drive for $50 wow thats low...these are good times were living in with all this technology and prices are not through the roof....i hope they stay that way...thanks for the reply

 

Re: hard drive/help please for laptop

Hello:

I am new to this forum and would like to commend the moderator and everyone involved for providing such an invaluable service: sharing and caring make the world go round more smoothly.

After reading the posts in this thread, I have finally accepted that I need a new hard drive. I have a Compaq Presario 2701us notebook, with 516MB RAM, a 30GB hard drive and a 1.3GHz Pentium III processor with Windows xp professional installed.

About three weeks ago, I was quite suddenly unable to start Windows. With a few restarts, scandisks did reveal that there was an error on the drive which it repaired, but windows simply did not start and an unending cycle of restarts ensued. There were no strnge noises, though.

A computer technician managed to get it started with the xp bootable disks I downloaded, but claimed he could not save any of my data (which I really want to salvage if I can) due to some unrecognizable format. I believe he then tried to install windows 98 on another partition in order to save the data, but this also proved futile. He eventually informed me that 4 out of 5 sectors were bad, hence the need for a new hard drive.

My questions are, however:

1) Can anything at all be done at this point to save any of the data? I think he could probably get it to my desktop but I am not sure I understand why he cannot save the data to floppys or CDs.

2) What site/retailer/manufacturers/brand do you recommend for an internal hard drive replacement for this model (I would now also invest in an external hard drive as well).

3) Since I am not in the US, is it safe to ship hard drives for notebooks? I have a slight misconception that they may be more fragile than other types.

4) My keyboard also appears to be fried, do replacement laptop keyboards work and can they be installed outside of the manufacturer of said laptop?

5) Are there any specific causes for such a crash or is it simply a random twisted twist?

Thank you in advance for your kind assistance and keep up the good work.

Stumpdt!