It’s been 14 years since I saw the S.M.A.R.T. warning that hard drive failure was imminent. That was a used drive I’d gotten off Ebay a few months before. I’ve built and sold dozens of pc’s. Updated dozens more with more memory and larger drives.
I’ve been really lucky with hardware. I’ve rarely had any failures.
This time a brand new Dell Latitude that I bought 6 weeks ago gave the S.M.A.R.T. imminent failure warning.
I’m calling Dell in a few minutes for a new hard drive. I can put it in myself.
Anyone heard a rumor that leaning a laptop up against the wall will damage the hard drive? My other Latitude I bought in 2007 spent its entire life leaned up against the bedroom wall and turned on. (make sure the CD Rom drive points up. Otherwise the carpet pushes the eject button.) I could grab it as needed when I was in bed to read the net. I upgraded the hard drive in 2009 and that drive did fine too. That laptop still run flawlessly.
Anyhow this new one died in six weeks. I may not install Dell’s replacement (it’s probably a Hitachi, 500 G). I have a brand new Seagate 500 G, 7200 RPM that I have more trust in. Seagate has been my trusted drive brand most of my career. I bought a Seagate in 2009 for that old Latitude that’s still working. I can always use Dell’s replacement drive as a spare external drive with a USB case enclosure.
Be careful, there’s malware that presents itself as a SMART warning. OTOH if the message appears before Windows starts, it’s probably legit.
Be very careful here. 7200 RPM drives can run much hotter than normal laptop drives, which often run at 5400 or 4800 RPM, and the laptop may not be able to cope.
Just learned that the new Dell Latitudes have a built in diagnostic. Press Fn and Power Button then release. First thing that popped up was my hard drive S.M.A.R.T. error. The Dell Tech wanted the error code for his records. Then the diagnostic checked the graphics card, memory, cpu it ran about 7 minutes total.
F2 gets you into the Bios.
Dell is shipping me a new drive, preloaded with my factory setup. That saves me the headache of reinstalling windows, updating the drivers and so on. I appreciate the time savings. Now I just have to reinstall my personal software and will be good as new.
For now, I’ll just use the Dell replacement drive. I’ll still have the Seagate that I bought a few months ago as a spare.
Dell is a first class company. Best support that I’ve dealt with. Up at my job we buy Dells and I’ve had to replace bad motherboards, memory etc before. Dell sends the parts and I put them in. Then send back the old ones.
Quartz thank you for the malware warning. I didn’t realize they were imitating S.M.A.R.T. errors. That’s something I’ll watch for.
Good point about the 7200 RPM drives getting hot. Dell shipped the Latitude with a 500 G 7200RPM drive. So hopefully the cooling fans inside the laptop are sufficient. If I have another hard drive failure then I’ll back off to a 5400RPM for sure. I’m considering a solid state drive in another year or so after the prices drop some more.
I may not install Dell’s replacement (it’s probably a Hitachi, 500 G). I have a brand new Seagate 500 G, 7200 RPM that I have more trust in. Seagate has been my trusted drive brand most of my career. I bought a Seagate in 2009 for that old Latitude that’s still working. I can always use Dell’s replacement drive as a spare external drive with a USB case enclosure.