Dead HD or other problem?

Message

ohnchoe · #1 Post by **ohnchoe** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 6:00 pm

for a t41p with a hitachi 7k60 travelstar...

tried to search but got no hits... can someone help me out?

Yesterday my machine froze for the first time in a long time. I rebooted as usual... ran scandisk, it froze midway. Rebooted, things ran normally.

This morning my machine froze again, i tried running in safe mode, running ibm's pre-windows boot utilities... nothing worked to get a stable boot up...

Nothing seems to work, it doesn't even get to initial IBM bootscreen anymore... fan turns on, hard drive clicks for a second, and then nothing. will try removing the drive, hooking up to another machine and scanning with that one, but wondering if anyone could provide any input.

Thanks.

#2 Post by **jdhurst** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 6:04 pm

What happened to my T41 and what is somewhat common in some T4x's is motherboards that crack or have cold solder joints. The only repair is a new motherboard. You may have a different problem, but what I describe is not unknown in the forum here.
... JD Hurst

ohnchoe · #3 Post by **ohnchoe** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 6:18 pm

hard drive doesn't respond at all when hooked up to another machine... guess its time for a new hd... clicks a few times like its searching, then nothing. urgh.

ohnchoe · #4 Post by **ohnchoe** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 7:59 am

just want to make sure i cover all my bases...

what are the symptoms if the mobo fails like mentioned above?

I can get the machine to boot once every 7 or 8 attempts (the rest of the time, the fan starts up but the screen remains blank), but if it does make it to windows, it freezes and the screen goes blank within a minute or so. strangely enough, the entire machine doesn't shut off, as the fan continues to whir.

I got pc doctor to run and it shows that the hd has no bad sectors... so i guess its not the HD (or is it?)

anyone have these problems before? is this a dead mobo?

jkahng · #5 Post by **jkahng** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 1:06 pm

Hello,
symptoms of harddrive failing don't always include bad sectors...
i do know that louder clicks / sounds from harddrive means trouble.

btw, do you download torrents with your laptop drive? torrents and other file sharing programs hit the harddrive hard. i download 24, csi and other tv shows as that's the only way to get them here.
i killed my hitachi 7200 60gb within 6 months by doing this.

i learned my lesson, i use an external usb or nas server now.

regards,
Jkahng

#6 Post by **jdhurst** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 2:48 pm

jkahng wrote:<snip>
btw, do you download torrents with your laptop drive? torrents and other file sharing programs hit the harddrive hard. i download 24, csi and other tv shows as that's the only way to get them here.
i killed my hitachi 7200 60gb within 6 months by doing this.
Jkahng

Can anyone verify this, or is it more likely co-incidence? Hard drives are meant to be used and writing over and over again doesn't strike me as hard drive abuse. Comments?
... JD Hurst

steveg47 · #7 Post by **steveg47** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 3:01 pm

jkahng wrote:i killed my hitachi 7200 60gb within 6 months by doing this.

Did you get an exchange from Hitachi? If so how did the warrantee exchange go?

#8 Post by **GomJabbar** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 5:16 pm

ohnchoe wrote:I can get the machine to boot once every 7 or 8 attempts (the rest of the time, the fan starts up but the screen remains blank), but if it does make it to windows, it freezes and the screen goes blank within a minute or so.

My experience with a bad hard drive is that I similarly had the symptom that the machine would sometimes boot up, and other times it would just freeze. It might take several attempts to get it to boot up. IIRC the hard drive access light stayed on (I could be wrong though - this happened several years ago). This was on a ThinkPad 600E notebook. In this case I believe the problem was that the hard drive would fail to spin up. It did not have any apparent bad sectors.

On a desktop PC that I had, I had 3 Maxtor hard drives fail. I was using a RAID setup, so the symptoms could be a little different. One thing I remember is that when the first drive of the RAID 0 setup failed, I decided to try and format the drive. The format went much slower than usual, then froze at about 70%.

In all cases, there was at least something displayed on the monitor - if only a text message. If your monitor or display is complelely blank without even a blinking cursor or text, then I believe you have more than a hard drive problem. You probably need a new motherboard, unless you want to try one of the fixes mentioned in the thread below.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=33952

#9 Post by **Kyocera** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 7:12 pm

I replaced a HD last week in a machine that would boot into bios splash and you could hear the HD make one loud click and that was it. Replaced HD and all is good.

#10 Post by **rkawakami** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 7:39 pm

jdhurst wrote:Can anyone verify this, or is it more likely co-incidence? Hard drives are meant to be used and writing over and over again doesn't strike me as hard drive abuse. Comments?

Can't verify this one way or the other but I can offer a personal observation. A couple of months ago I was transcoding a video file on a T23 and after about 2.5 hours, the disk drive (Toshiba MK6026GAX) triggered a temperature alarm (50C). The disk is spec'ed for a max of 55C (131F). I'm assuming that since the input and output file was in the same place (the hard drive), the heads must have been flying back and forth across the disk. If the system is being left on for hours at a time, uploading and downloading files in a torrent, then it may be possible to "cook" the drive.

I should also note that the CPU temp was running in the 70's for the entire operation and probably contributed to the excessive temperature inside the laptop.

jkahng · #11 Post by **jkahng** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 9:08 pm

Hello everyone,
replacement : i bought this drive from newegg and still had the 3 year oem warranty as it happened after about 1 year of use. i tried to get it serviced here in korea but they won't do warranty work for drives bought overseas. i needed to send the drive to singapore. i got the rma and was about to send the drive but figured out the shipping costs would be more than what a new drive costs. i gave up on the return and it's in my desk.
i have since bought all drives locally with local warranty.

i have no proof that torrent downloading killed my harddrive. but the way torrent downloading works (a file is split up in to several thousand little pieces and written / accessed insequentially)
would put much stress to the harddrive.
i agree with JD Hurst that drives should by able to take the abuse. but for me, using an external desktop harddrive for torrent download is a relatively easy way to avoid the abuse.

John Kahng

#12 Post by **jdhurst** » Mon Mar 19, 2007 9:10 pm

Thanks.

Perfect Disk V7 had a bug in it where it would take 7 or 8 hours to defrag the second hard drive on my desktop. The bug was related to very large files and trying to relocate (defrag) them by reading in and writing out. That was constant IO for many hours, and I never had a problem, but then, they are desktop (5 inch) drives, not laptop drives, and that may be a difference.
... JD Hurst

ohnchoe · #13 Post by **ohnchoe** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 9:25 am

Thanks for the input guys. I looked through the thread related to the loose corner of the ati chip, and tried rebooting while pressing down the chip with the keyboard off... Machine booted up normally. I tried using the "Post-it fix" and it seemed to remedy the problem, at least in the short run. Only problem is that i might have put a few too many post its... feel a slight elevation underneath the blue scroll button. Still, i may look to purchase a new primary machine, as this could well become problematic as I continue to use it. I don't want to be constantly concerned about flex in the chassis / motherboard...

Has anyone noted similar problems with the t60p's, or has it not been long enough for such problems to surface?

jkahng · #14 Post by **jkahng** » Tue Mar 20, 2007 11:04 am

it looks like i led you on a wild goose chase... i'm happy that you pin pointed the problem.

good luck on your gpu chip fix. looks like you should pull out your air gun and try that
regards,
John Kahng

Dead HD or other problem?

Dead HD or other problem?

Who is online