[AgentXu]

Alrighty... so, I'll be working on my M1530 with 4 G's of RAM and 300G hard drive when suddenly I'll hear a "Click" which causes everything to freeze. The only way to fix this is to turn it off with the button and then re-start. Upon doing so about 70% of the time I get a message saying that a disk needs to be checked for consistency. I always let it run and it always takes about 3 or 4 minutes. Sometimes it has a bunch of files and such to "replace" or "locate." But usually it's a pretty stream lined process in spite of being sort of nuisance.

Upon re-booting it will work fine for a while (seemingly dependent on whether my wifi card is active or not)and then the same thing will happen.

The clicking and wifi card suggest a hardware problem to me but I'd like to know what to do (if anything) to fix this Vista need to check C-Drive for consistency. I know I can turn off the auto check through CMD but that won't -fix- whatever is wrong. So any suggestions would be appreciated. My thanks.





A.X.

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It looks like your HD is dying.
Backup your data immediately.

Run hard drive diagnostics: http://www.tacktech....ay.cfm?ttid=287
Make sure, you select tool, which is appropriate for the brand of your hard drive.
Depending on the program, it'll create bootable floppy, or bootable CD.
If downloaded file is of .iso type, use ImgBurn: http://www.imgburn.com/ to burn .iso file to a CD (select "Write image file to disc" option), and make the CD bootable.

NOTE. If your hard drive is made by Toshiba, unfortunately, you're out of luck, because Toshiba doesn't provide any diagnostic tool.

[Broni]

It looks like your HD is dying.
Backup your data immediately.

Run hard drive diagnostics: http://www.tacktech....ay.cfm?ttid=287
Make sure, you select tool, which is appropriate for the brand of your hard drive.
Depending on the program, it'll create bootable floppy, or bootable CD.
If downloaded file is of .iso type, use ImgBurn: http://www.imgburn.com/ to burn .iso file to a CD (select "Write image file to disc" option), and make the CD bootable.

NOTE. If your hard drive is made by Toshiba, unfortunately, you're out of luck, because Toshiba doesn't provide any diagnostic tool.

[AgentXu]

This is probably a really stupid question but how do I figure out what brand my HD is? This is a Dell but my guess wasn't on the list in the link.




A.X.

[Broni]

Start>Control Panel>Device Manager>Disk drives
It should tell you.

[AgentXu]

Test Option: QUICK TEST
Model Number: WDC WD3200BEVT-75ZCT2
Unit Serial Number: WD-WXC0A59H6135
Firmware Number: 11.01A11
Capacity: 320.07 GB
SMART Status: PASS
Test Result: FAIL
Test Error Code: 06-Quick Test on drive 1 did not complete! Status code = 07 (Failed read test element), Failure Checkpoint = 97 (Unknown Test) SMART self-test did not complete on drive 1!
Test Time: 05:50:33, October 30, 2009


That, according to my research, is a bad sign. I tried running the Full Scan but it wouldn't complete (and by that I mean that the computer wouldn't allow the process to finish.) So, before I call Dell for the 800 trillionth time over this same machine which seems to have the functional shelf life of Amy Winehouse, is there anything else I should try? This computer is now like 4 months old so the idea of the HD dying already is pretty alarming.



A.X.

Edited by AgentXu, 30 October 2009 - 06:15 AM.

[Broni]

The drive is definitely almost dead.
As for 4 month, you won't beat me.
When I bought my Compaq desktop, the HD went after 6 weeks