Best hd for dimension 4600c

I have a dell dimension 4600c, purchased new from dell in 2004. HD died in June 2005. Replaced with wd hd june 2005. wd hd died august 2006. Is this the usual life span for a hard drive? I am running win xp pro. What hd can you recommend that will possibly last longer than 1 year?

Thanks,
Ruby

 

You should try to find out why the HDDs are "dying ". WD are one of the top brands and should not give up easily. Since it seems to be a recurring problem I think there may be other factors involved.

Dells are not supplied with very large power supplies. Run this power calculator and check it against the wattage rating on the PSU:
http://www.journeysystems.com/power_supply_calculator.php
Check the voltage readouts in the BIOS/Startup settings.

If you are running with only 256Mb or so of RAM, the RAM is probably being filled at bootup and the overflow is being run as Pagefile on the HDD. Instead of being loaded into RAM, programs that are opened get loaded into the virtual memory (pagefile). If you notice that there is a lot of HDD LED activity after you get to the blank desktop this will probably mean that pagefile is being used. Check the figure for Available Memory in Task Manager.
My friend was given a laptop with 64Mb of RAM. I suggested he use Win 98 or maybe Win 2K, he put Win XP on it. The HDD was dead within a week.

If the WD is not being "seen" by the computer, it could have a corrupt MBR. The WD Lifeguard utilities would be able to test it. You could use the utilities to do a low-level (zero) format which would rewrite the MBR.

Matt

 

It's also possible that you got a lemon. It's not unheard of that a hard drive would last 5 or more years these days.

Since all the big name driver mfrs. make high-quality products, it's really hard to recommend one over the other. Any recommendations you do get will based on personal experience with a couple of grains of bias thrown in - just like the following:

I like Maxtors and Hitachis. But, you can take that with a grain of salt.

 

RubyRed1213--Do you remember what length of warranty you got with the Dell 4600c? I think the standard (free) warranty then was two years (could have been three) and the Dell sales people were always pushing a five year warranty for an extra $100 or so.

 

Hello Ruby,

For comparison:

I'm still running a 40 and a 20 GB WD hard drives from 2001 as external USB connected HD's. Still chugging away.

Regards - Charles

 

dell 4600c

Thanks for the advice. I purchased a Maxtor 80 gig hd (with extended warranty, of course). My dell came with the standard 1 year warranty and I didn't get the extended because it was new and a dell. my previous computer was a used acer and i had no problems with it, so i didn't think i needed the extended warranty for a new dell.
I think I must be an electronic piece of **** dominatrix or something, because they all seem to find me

Ruby