Possible hard drive failure?

[eLiu]

Hey all,
My gf's laptop was recently acting really screwy...wouldn't even boot to windows--it would go through the load screen...but never reach the login. Rather, it'd BSoD and reboot itself.

The machine is a Toshiba M200 TabletPC with a Hitachi 60GB, 5400RPM drive.

So I decided to reformat & reinstall Windows (I actually used the proprietary ghost program + default factory image because I don't have a copy of TabletPC windows laying around, lol). That was an adventure in itself...

Anyway I got everything up and running; then we installed some important programs and took a disk image.

Problem 1a: Using DriveImage 2002 (never given me problems before), the image fails, throwing some kind of CRC error (right off the bat)
Problem 1b: I try it again...this time: error #1831, Image file not found (at about 70%)

So I went to Hitachi's website & downloaded their HD-health utility, suspecting that maybe something was wrong with the HD...

Ran the advanced scan--it says one of the clusters is corrupted. I have 2 options: 1) repair utility, 2) erase drive. I try option 1 first:

Technical result code:
Drive information:
Serial Number: L4GWEUEC
failure code: 0x75 - Defective Device. Component Failure.
Technical Result Code (TRC): 756125B4

-Then I ran option 2...and it completed successfully. Subsequent error scan reported no errors.


I'm currently in the process of reinstalling windows (again!) and everything seems to be running smoothly this time.

Now...do you guys think that I should have my gf RMA her laptop? Or was the original 'component failure' error some kind of fluke? (since it didn't show up after using the erase utility).


CLIFF'S NOTES:
1) Windows gives BSoD on bootup
2) reformat & reinstall windows using Toshiba's ghost & factory image
3) Use DiskImage2002 to image drive, it fails twice
4) Use Hitachi's drive-health utility; advanced scan shows error in some cluster
5) Attempt to repair....fails (error code shown above)
6) Attempt to use HD erase utility (another 'repair' option)--succeeds & subsequent error scan shows nothing.
7) Currently reinstalling, hoping for the best...
8) Should my gf RMA the laptop or was the error a fluke?
9) ...
10) No profit?!

UPDATE: Attempted Drive Image again, fails with the same CRC error.
UPDATE2: Attempted image by Norton Ghost, failure:
Backup of C:\ did not complete succesffully.
Error E7C3000F: Device \\/\PQV2iSnapShot0 cannot read 4,096 sectors starting at LBA 18,799,760. Error 0000045D: The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error. (0xE7C3000F)


Thanks!
-Eric

EDIT: The drive has 2 partitions, C (windows) & D (other stuff). All important data was retrieved & so on.

 

[furballi]

Send it in for repair. HDD failure is common with notebooks.

 

[eLiu]

So this is a HD failure and not just a fluke?

B/c after windows installation & more scans, we're not getting the error anymore...haven't gotten to the disk image yet though.

 

[eLiu]

any other takers?

 

[Brona]

Hi,

I recommend you using KillDisk softwarwe to erase your HDD and start from scratch. KillDisk is capable of erasing the whole drive so any malicious software will be erased as well. You can then re-partition and re-format your HDD to start using it from scratch. It also posses some high secure erase algorithms like DoD M5220 and Guttmans. Head to www.killdisk.com for more info and download.