[ale] OT. Dead harddrive on laptop

Wed Jan 25 14:10:21 EST 2012

Thank again folks, especially Ron Frazier,

Yesterday I removed the drive from the laptop and ordered an "exact"
(new) replacement from <computergeeks.com> (Fujitsu MHU2100AT) for
close to $ 60.- As indicated, I do not know how exact the replacement
is. It looked the same, has the same model number etc. It seems to run
at 4200 rpm, I never knew that, is that normal for this kind of laptop
(hp Pavilion)? Seems kind of lowish. The removal was amazingly simple,
just remove two screws from a special compartment, then two more
screws and the drive comes out.

For that price it seems not worth mucking around too much. Unless the
new one is problematic I postpone recovery efforts. Once a drive has
problems, even minor ones, it is time to look for a replacement.

I knew about the Thailand problem, but these drives were in stock.

I thought about upgrading to 300 GB (old one was 100 GB), but the BIOS
might not let me
Anyway, I never even half filled the old one.

Yes, the system will still recognize an XP repair disk  (and Linux
install media) and I did FIXMBR as well as CHKDSK, all to no avail,
The CHKDSK mentions unrecoverable errors. The BIOS hard drive check
cannot even find the drive, says "No IDE".

The new drive will probably arrive late this week or early next week.
I will keep you posted.

Thanks for all the help and comments, keep them coming,

Cor van Dijk

On 1/25/12, Ron Frazier <atllinuxenthinfo at c3energy.com> wrote:
> If I were to buy a hard drive now, I'd look at look at hybrid SSD /
> magnetic technology.  It combines the best features of magnetic and the
> best features of SSD.  I have 2 of these in service, from Seagate, and I
> really like them.  They're 7200 RPM, have a 4 GB SSD cache, and (when I
> bought them) have 5 year warranty.  Regarding the warranty, you have to
> check each part number individually.  Sometimes they're different even
> though the features are the same.  The hybrid technology makes the
> computer boot MUCH faster, and makes certain applications run much
> faster.  I cannot speak to the long term longevity of the SSD part of
> the system, and indeed, I have serious misgivings about the long term
> longevity of SSD devices.  I had my GPS once decide it just wasn't going
> to read parts of it's internal SSD memory.  I had to restore it three
> times to get it working again.  Now it's happy again.  We just don't
> have 20 years of experience with SSD like we do with spinning media.
> Hopefully, whatever they're caching in the SSD part is also stored on
> the magnetic part.  However, I can say I certainly like the performance
> of these drives up to this point.
>
> For some reason, I couldn't get to the newegg site while writing this
> email, but here are a couple of links you can look at.  I'm assuming
> we're talking SATA interface, not PATA.  If his computer is old, it
> could be PATA.  Anyway, Frys has the unit in the link below, which is a
> 500 GB, 7200 RPM, notebook hybrid HDD, for $ 150, limit 1 / household.
> The first link is to an older Seagate part number which may have changed
> by now.
>
> http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?name=st95005620as-momentus-xt-sata-3gbs-4gb-500gb-drv&vgnextoid=8ba8576b12b38210VgnVCM1000001a48090aRCRD&vgnextchannel=f424072516d8c010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD&locale=en-US&reqPage=Support
>
> http://www.frys.com/product/6320511?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Ron
>
> On 1/25/2012 12:13 AM, Greg Clifton wrote:
>> Cornelius,
>>
>> Most likely it is the hard drive itself, though it could be a BIOS
>> issue (in times past you wouldn't be able to boot if your CMOS battery
>> failed because the drive parameters stored in the BIOS were lost, but
>> that was resolved many years ago with PNP by having the BIOS poll the
>> drive for the parameters), since that is the moving part and those are
>> what generally fail. If you suspect the controller, you could shuck
>> out the drive and put it in an external USB enclosure and test on
>> another machine to verify that it is not anything else with this
>> laptop that is causing you grief.
>>
>> Assuming it is the hard drive, it **should** be a SATA drive, but if
>> much more than 4 or 5 years old, it could be an IDE  drive. If SATA,
>> you can get a new 500GB drive from NewEgg for ~ $100 to $120, or a
>> 320GB for pretty much the same price, if you prefer. Your timing is
>> bad on this as hard drives have gone up considerably in price since
>> the flood in Thailand, but still 500GB 2.5" drive for less than $150
>> delivered isn't bad compared to what you would have paid for one that
>> size just 2-3 years ago.
>>
>> Someone posted about 7.2K 5 year warranty drives and yes, those are
>> pretty much gone away. You only get the 5 year warranty on Enterprise
>> Class Drives and "you gets what you pays for", as they say. But
>> honestly folks, how can you expect the corporapist drive manufacturers
>> to stay in business while selling a 3TB hard drive for ~ $150 retail
>> (prior to the flood) and cover it for 5 or even 3 years. We all know
>> that drives are generally MUCH more reliable than they were back in
>> the MFM and RLL days not to mention BIGGER, FASTER and CHEAPER. So go
>> cry in your beer if you can't find a 5 yr warranty drive for less than
>> $300 now after the flood. But it is still pretty damn cheap for what
>> you get with a 1 year warranty even after the flood.
>>
>> BTW for you Seagate lovers/haters among us, they just recently agreed
>> to buy the Samsung HDD business. I don't think the deal has closed
>> yet, but probably won't be wrong. My guess is that Samsung didn't have
>> good contracts for the parts that are in shortage since the flood and
>> they are going to concentrate on SSDs, but I didn't actually read
>> anything on that.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Greg Clifton
>
> --
>
> (PS - If you email me and don't get a quick response, you might want to
> call on the phone.  I get about 300 emails per day from alternate energy
> mailing lists and such.  I don't always see new messages very quickly.)
>
> Ron Frazier
>
> 770-205-9422 (O)   Leave a message.
> linuxdude AT c3energy.com
>
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