Laptop hard drive shot?

[gmc8757]

hey guys....my sister has a laptop with an interesting problem....one day it froze on her...so she shut it down cold.
Next thing she knows it can't load up to windows...it was stuck in an infinite loop. Since she was away at college, she brought it to the IT people there. They said they tried everything to save her data but couldn't....i'm not sure if they tried fixmbr...fixboot...chkdsk.....so they reformatted(without permission, but that's another story) So then they tried to install windows back on it, they said it wouldn't go.

So finally, I told her to bring it home, and when i get back from college i would look at it. I thought a simple chkdsk would have done the trick, i told my dad how to do it, and he says it doesn't work. When he did it, it says something like "drive serial number 0000-0000 could not be found". And if he tries to reformat, it gets to 20% and hangs, won't go any further. Can't install windows or anything. I think the hard drive is shot. Do you guys know anyway i can tell? Is there any program i can try to run off of cd that can tell me anything? The laptop is one of the cheap ones at wallmart http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product....&dept=3944&path=0%3A3944%3A3951%3A4070 , it was all she could afford.

but anyway, what do you guys think? any help would be appreciated.

 

[Uncle Bob]

most of a hard drive manufacturers have a diagnostic program available for download that will test the drive.

You may not know what make of hard drive is installed but some of them will test any make of drive.

does sound like that hard drive is defective - is the laptop still under warranty?

 

[gmc8757]

thanks for the reply, no warranty, came with the 90 day warranty about 200 days ago. My other sister has the same one and i'm totally surprised how well it runs.

How would i run this software, is it bootable. Anyone know which software i can try??
Thanks

 

[microAmp]

Originally posted by: gmc8757
thanks for the reply, no warranty, came with the 90 day warranty about 200 days ago. My other sister has the same one and i'm totally surprised how well it runs.

How would i run this software, is it bootable. Anyone know which software i can try??
Thanks

For which software, you have to know the maker of the hard drive itself. This information could also be on some type of invoice that came with the laptop. If you can get into the BIOS, it also might give you a hint there of who makes the hard drive. Other than those 2 ideas, you might have to physically take the hard drive out to see.

The software is bootable, so you won't need to get into Windows to run it.

 

[gmc8757]

Ok....looks like the drive is a hitachi here's the number ic25n040atmr04. let me know if you guys are able to find anything. Thanks, again.

 

[gmc8757]

So i came across this, it's call the "drive fitness test" http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm
I told my dad to download and run it. I wish i had this thing in front of me right now, or better yet, i wish i had it before her IT ppl at school messed with it.

 

[montag451]

If they did format the drive, it might still be possible to recover some, a little (?!) data from it.

Try spinrite6, or getdataback - Dont write anything else to the drive if you want to do that.

 

[gmc8757]

ok, so he tried the software from hitachi and it read the disk the first time saying there was an error with "SMART"

Than he tried to load windows.....nothing.

THan he rand the hitachi software again, and it said that it couldn't find the hard drive.

Even when he tries chkdsk, it tells him that hard disk Serial number 0000-0000 could not be found.

After that, he put the hard drive in the freezer for sometime(don't know where he got that idea from) and when it was nice and cold, he put it back the laptop, and started it up. The damn thing loaded right up to windows. After messing with it in Windows, he restarted to see if it would come back, and it went back into it's infinite loop. He put the hitachi software back in, and it didn't recognize the disk.
Do you guys have any clue what's going on with this thing? Do you think it's the drive itself? If so, do you think i can get hitachi to replace it since it was bought in October?
Thanks guys.

 

[gmc8757]

just in case anyone is interested..here's an update.

He called hitachi, and they said it was the drive that's bad and needs replacement.
They also said they have a 3 yr warranty on them. However, they also said since the company who he bought the laptop from only offered a 3 month parts and labor warranty, that's all hitachi can allow as well.

So even though hitachi offers 3 years, they can't honor it because of the 3 month garbage. He's going to be buying a drive and get it over with....i think it's crap that they can't honor it anyway....who knows

 

[moonsite]

Hitachi drive is suck. If he buy a new drive, get toshiba.

 

[gmc8757]

ok cool....how much do they go for...around