Drive behavior

[02befree]

Had an IBM Travelstar 20GB from a Dell laptop I was recovering data from.
Initial tests showed bad sectors and it would intermittently show Primary
hard disk drive 0 not found message on boot up. After looking at it
connected with a USB enclosure, it was severely fragmented, and after
deleting some files to give it some room to work, I defrag'd it several
times and after running a CHKDSK /r ran a diagnostic on it and it passed
several tests with Drive Fitness, and SMART. Thought all was well, put it
in the laptop and got the message again. Rebuilt the boot.ini and started
fine. Then it died, and now the drive won't even spin. Mfg in 10/01. I
thought it was toast to start with, but after passing the tests, hoped for
the better.
Comments?

 

[Rod Speed]

Had an IBM Travelstar 20GB from a Dell laptop I was recovering data
from. Initial tests showed bad sectors and it would intermittently
show Primary hard disk drive 0 not found message on boot up. After
looking at it connected with a USB enclosure, it was severely
fragmented, and after deleting some files to give it some room to
work, I defrag'd it several times and after running a CHKDSK /r ran a
diagnostic on it and it passed several tests with Drive Fitness, and
SMART. Thought all was well, put it in the laptop and got the
message again. Rebuilt the boot.ini and started fine. Then it died,
and now the drive won't even spin. Mfg in 10/01. I thought it was
toast to start with, but after passing the tests, hoped for the better.

Comments?

The low end Dells of that vintage run the hard drive at the
extreme end of the max temp allowed by the manufacturer.

That may well be the reason you only saw problems with it in the Dell.

 

[02befree]

The low end Dells of that vintage run the hard drive at the
extreme end of the max temp allowed by the manufacturer.

That may well be the reason you only saw problems with it in the Dell.

Makes sense. Ran much better in the enclosure, and it was hot as a pancake
right out of the laptop