Laptop hard drive issues!

So I'm not sure where to start with my issue that I have been having, so I'll start from the beginning. About 6 months ago I bought a refurbished ASUS laptop that has run great so far, but over the last month I have had some issues. About a month ago, my laptop BSoD'd on me. I could probably have sent it in on warranty (I think it had a 90 day ASUS warranty, but I have a 2 year extended warranty on top of that), but I'm the type of person who doesn't like to wait, ESPECIALLY if I can just fix it myself. So I decided that it was definitely my hard drive that did it in on me, and I had a spare 2.5" drive laying around so I decided to throw that one in and install a new OS on it, and voila, it was running again. However, just yesterday it decided to hang up at the Windows loading screen.. It seems as though its the hard drive again, because I tried to put the hard drive in one of those USB adaptors and all it does is freeze up my desktop when I try and hook it up to the computer. But is it possible that two hard drives crashed on me in a month? Or is it perhaps just my laptop that might be causing the issues?

I realize this might not really give anybody enough info to go off of, but is there anything you guys could suggest I do? I've tried to reinstall windows, but it freezes in setup and I can't even do that!!

 

I am like you. Hate to wait. But at this point, I would put the original HD back in and take advantage of the warranty. Saw on another Board somebody has had 5 HD under warranty and it still isn't fixed. I would be demanding a new Lappy before it got that far. This was a new lappy that I am talking about on the 5 HD. Got to be a real problem there.

 

Dang, I sure hope I don't get to the point where I'm doing this 5 times.. Luckily I was able to boot up with Puppy Linux and it was actually able to retrieve some of the files on there.. took a LONG TIME but I can at least take solace in the fact that I was able to nab my emails and important docs before sending my laptop off..

 

Hi CPOE, may be the laptop board is defective or powersupply to hdd is having trouble which might have caused to the failure of both HDD. I think the best suggestion is to put the original hdd which had come with the system and send it to warranty replacement. With regards to data i think you have limited option only to connect to the external casing with usb support.

 

Well, see, now there is the tricky part.. When I put the hdd in an external casing and hook it up to my desktop I can't seem to be able to access it. On my Vista machine, when I connect it via usb, it hangs up explorer (like when I'm in the 'my computer' folder) and it doesn't show up as a drive with the other drives, except for the moment I disconnect it, additional drives 'k' and 'l' appear only momentarily before disappearing again. It would appear that Windows is having issues mounting the usb drive. Then, on my Ubuntu desktop, similar issue, except it gives me an error message saying it can't mount the drive due to some sort of error on the hard drive,

 

Does the original HDD have a hidden recovery partition? The system manual should tell you how to run it. If you send it back under warranty I think that's all they will do, they won't try saving your data.

If you swap drives, go into the BIOS and select the "Default" settings. If the hard drive is listed, check that it is listed correctly. Something I find that affects the startup system, if you are not using the recovery system, is the setting for ACHI. You should find it under the SATA Controller settings.

If you want to use the second HDD as a guinea pig, try booting to the Windows disk, select R to go to the Recovery Console and run FIXMBR. If that seems successful, run CHKDSK /r. There is also FIXBOOT, but that shouldn't be relevant to mounting the drive.

You can run the HDD manufacturer's testing utilities. You should be able to run them from a boot CD. If they say there are errors on the original HDD, send it back under warranty. The utilities might have options to back up the MBR and (then) update the MBR.

Have you been updating any drivers? I wonder if something like that is causing the drive/partition problems (SATA Controllers or ACHI, like I mentioned). Windows XP probably won't like being installed on a partition made or modified by Linux or Vista. Use Windows XP, the system manufacturer's (Asus) or the HDD manufacturer's utilities to test/check or modify it.

Matt
PS If you send it away for warranty, you should run the HDD testing utilities on it when it comes back to ensure it is "good ".

 

I hadn't updated any drivers for a little while.. I've tried using the recovery option with the Windows boot disk, but it freezes up every time after selecting the recovery option.

 

I can't suggest anything else. Try disabling ACHI. Unfortunately I would suspect the partition information is corrupted. If so, the only thing that might "repair" it is the HDD manufacturer's utilities.

If you don't need the data, you could delete the partition and remake it.

It is strange that it has happened on two HDDs. As I said, avoid making or modifying partitions with Linux or Vista.

Matt