Strange hard disk failure... ?

[markus4412]

Hi, my laptop's been working fine without any problems for about 2
years, when this morning when I turned it on it couldn't detect its
internal hard disk. the bios is set to 'auto detect', and it couldnt
find anything there.

I turned it off, took the back off the laptop and made sure the hard
disk was connected up correctly (it was), put the back on again, and it
then detected it correctly, and went into windows xp's system 'resume'
function, with the percentage bar across the bottom of the screen (as
if instead of switching it off, i'd chosen to 'suspend and save the
state' to the hard disk). Thing is, rather than the usual few minutes,
it spent a good half hour for the bar to fill up, and then it got back
into windows and works fine.

Any ideas what went wrong?

SMART says everything's OK with the hard disk...?

I'm a bit confused...

 

[Rod Speed]

(e-mail address removed) wrote

Hi, my laptop's been working fine without any problems for about 2
years, when this morning when I turned it on it couldn't detect its
internal hard disk. the bios is set to 'auto detect', and it couldnt
find anything there.

I turned it off, took the back off the laptop and made sure the hard
disk was connected up correctly (it was), put the back on again, and
it then detected it correctly, and went into windows xp's system
'resume' function, with the percentage bar across the bottom of the
screen (as if instead of switching it off, i'd chosen to 'suspend and
save the state' to the hard disk). Thing is, rather than the usual
few minutes, it spent a good half hour for the bar to fill up, and
then it got back into windows and works fine.

Any ideas what went wrong?

Likely you have a warmup fault and thats why its working now,
its warmed up now. Those are usually a bad solder joint etc.

 

[ndy]

Likely you have a warmup fault and thats why its working now,
its warmed up now. Those are usually a bad solder joint etc.

you're a good man Rod, always there to add some insight, much
appreciated by us light weights. if I could bore you for a minute or so
longer.

if you remember a few weeks back I had that 'reboot and select proper
boot device ...etc' problem that would happen from a very cold boot so I
kept it on standby (with fans running mode) for a week because it became
harder and harder to get to kick on. was very busy back then and waiting
for the replacement drive, and then no time to play computer repair guy
so it was a awhile and why I never got back to that thread.

any way, called Maxtor the following Mon, the Maxtor guy said it could
maybe be the OS and to do a low level format. I said, you mean a clean
install, and he said yes. I said, well if I'm going to go through all
that trouble then send me a replacement and I'll do that to a new drive
if I have to as more than likely as some have suggested to me online
that if it were software related I would be getting software related
error messages.

he agreed, sent me the replacement and I then used (upon your
suggestions from the past) Acronis True Image, which I got version 8 for
like nothing. I'll say here this bootable CD is almost error less,
probably because it all done before the OS loads and runs interference.
I have cloned, restored a bunch of times now from that and its works
great. Norton Ghost is horrid compared to this which I barely was able
to clone off of it once a few months back after a weekend of hair pulling.

anyway, I did a clone, started the replacement and it worked for a
while, and then, I got that same message again. oh boy! at this point, I
stuck my original HD that came with the machine back in there with the
old setup still on there and it worked fine, no problem with cold boots
or anything?? now what, motherboard (no noticeable cap problems like you
suggested to look for, no visible signs of any MB trouble) .... power,
maybe.

so, knowing I had a safety net, I put the replacement drive back in
there after a couple of days to get to the root of the problem. well, it
continued to do the same thing but then it started to just shut down and
reboot on its own after it had started up for few minutes or so. not
good. then it started giving me an error message 'error boot device,
press ctrl-alt-Adel' and that would be it. it wouldn't start up at all,
as I guess now I had moved up to file corruption as well. so, using that
trusty True Image bootable CD I easily restored the drive but that new
problem came back. after the second time I noticed this time the BIOS
was showing the HD as some incoherent lettering. now the system is not
even recognizing the drive like it did in the past for the original
error message.

so this made me wonder if the reason the drives seem to work when I
switch them around, unhook them, then reattach them is something to with
the fact that I am monkeying around with the cable .... bad cable, could
it be that simple???

that was it!!! replaced that thing and now no problems with the
replacement drive or my original newer drive. sometimes it really is the
very obvious and yet no one at Maxtor though to suggest that to me as
well???

so, out of curiosity, one last question. I now have the replacement
drive in my computer running and my original drive I bought a few months
back is fine. soon I have to send 1 of these drives back to eliminate a
charge with the exchange RMA I am using. the replacement drive is a
refurbished drive. I could easily use True Image to clone this drive to
my original and send either drive back, Maxtor already told me they
don't care which one as long as they get one in 30 days.

what drive would you keep? one that had a problem and was refurbished,
which could be for anything, even something like my issue that was sent
back and nothings wrong, or something internal fixed as I did notice a
little dab of excess sealant around the center, back of the drive
casing, probably indicating they did go inside. or, my original drive, a
few months old and relatively brand new. both have the warranty. is it a
tossup??? knowing what you know about these things, what would you do?

 

[Rod Speed]

Rod Speed wrote

you're a good man Rod, always there to add some insight, much
appreciated by us light weights. if I could bore you for a minute or
so longer.

Sure, I always prefer to know what the washup actually was.

if you remember a few weeks back I had that 'reboot and select proper
boot device ...etc' problem that would happen from a very cold boot
so I kept it on standby (with fans running mode) for a week because
it became harder and harder to get to kick on. was very busy back
then and waiting for the replacement drive, and then no time to play
computer repair guy so it was a awhile and why I never got back to
that thread.

any way, called Maxtor the following Mon, the Maxtor guy said it could
maybe be the OS and to do a low level format. I said, you mean a clean
install, and he said yes. I said, well if I'm going to go through all
that trouble then send me a replacement and I'll do that to a new
drive if I have to as more than likely as some have suggested to me
online
that if it were software related I would be getting software related
error messages.

he agreed, sent me the replacement and I then used (upon your
suggestions from the past) Acronis True Image, which I got version 8
for like nothing. I'll say here this bootable CD is almost error less,
probably because it all done before the OS loads and runs interference.

I have cloned, restored a bunch of times now from that and its works
great. Norton Ghost is horrid compared to this which I barely was able
to clone off of it once a few months back after a weekend of hair
pulling.

Yeah, its real bad news now that you cant clone from
a booted CD anymore. Terminally stupid approach.

You can sort of see why they have gone that route, that avoids an
entirely separate bootable CD, but its just about useless now for cloning.

anyway, I did a clone, started the replacement and it worked for a
while, and then, I got that same message again. oh boy! at this
point, I stuck my original HD that came with the machine back in
there with the old setup still on there and it worked fine, no
problem with cold boots or anything?? now what, motherboard (no
noticeable cap problems like you suggested to look for, no visible
signs of any MB trouble) .... power, maybe.

so, knowing I had a safety net, I put the replacement drive back in
there after a couple of days to get to the root of the problem. well,
it continued to do the same thing but then it started to just shut
down and reboot on its own after it had started up for few minutes or
so. not good. then it started giving me an error message 'error boot
device, press ctrl-alt-Adel' and that would be it. it wouldn't start
up at all, as I guess now I had moved up to file corruption as well.
so, using that trusty True Image bootable CD I easily restored the
drive but that new problem came back. after the second time I noticed
this time the BIOS was showing the HD as some incoherent lettering.
now the system is not even recognizing the drive like it did in the past
for the original error message.

so this made me wonder if the reason the drives seem to work when I
switch them around, unhook them, then reattach them is something to
with the fact that I am monkeying around with the cable .... bad
cable, could it be that simple???

that was it!!! replaced that thing and now no problems with the
replacement drive or my original newer drive. sometimes it really is
the very obvious

Yeah, you always kick yourself when you work it out eventually.

and yet no one at Maxtor though to suggest that to me as well???

Yeah, people decry the use of scripts by operations like that, but
those do ensure that all the bases are covered if done properly.

so, out of curiosity, one last question. I now have the replacement
drive in my computer running and my original drive I bought a few
months back is fine. soon I have to send 1 of these drives back to
eliminate a charge with the exchange RMA I am using. the replacement
drive is a refurbished drive. I could easily use True Image to clone
this drive to my original and send either drive back, Maxtor already
told me they don't care which one as long as they get one in 30 days.

what drive would you keep? one that had a problem and was
refurbished, which could be for anything, even something like
my issue that was sent back and nothings wrong, or something
internal fixed as I did notice a little dab of excess sealant around
the center, back of the drive casing, probably indicating they did
go inside. or, my original drive, a few months old and relatively
brand new. both have the warranty. is it a tossup??? knowing
what you know about these things, what would you do?

I'd keep the original myself. I've never been as keen on refurbs,
you know that had a problem at one time and its always possible
that its an intermittent fault that no one could actually see the
problem with so it was just decided that it must have been user error.

 

[ndy]

I'd keep the original myself. I've never been as keen on refurbs,
you know that had a problem at one time and its always possible
that its an intermittent fault that no one could actually see the
problem with so it was just decided that it must have been user error.

I was pretty much thinking along those lines as well, but I figured,
with all your experience, I'd get your take. makes it unanimous, the
refurb goes back.

thanks again for your interest around here, much appreciated.