Dying hard drive or Microsoft bug?

[tisource]

To whom it may concern,

I have a COMPAQ Presario 1210us notebook. It has been a good notebook for the 9-10 months I've had it.

Recently, however, it's been acting strangely. It locks up for no reason whatsoever. I've reinstalled windows and I seem to get the same problem. Any access through explorer (WinME) to the hard drive is delayed for 5-10 seconds and then it flies for a while. The Hard drive is a Hitachi.

I don't lose data -- everything seems to be okay. It's a reliability and performance issue.

I grabbed IBM's SMART Monitoring program, and it indicates the hard drive has failed. It says to return it to the manufacturer immediately. It does say, however, that it is made only for IBM drives (??). I grabbed another SMART program (Apricorn) and it said the drive was fine. ActiveSMART, on the other hand, has indicated the drive has had some problems. Here's the log:
==================================================
19 June 2002 08:46:25 :: ALERT
[HITACHI_DK23BA-20] - :
: E1 - Load Cycle Count
: 84
: 83

19 June 2002 08:46:26 :: INFO
admin@localhost

19 June 2002 09:47:20 :: ALERT
[HITACHI_DK23BA-20] - :
: E1 - Load Cycle Count
: 84
: 83

24 June 2002 09:13:27 :: ALERT
[HITACHI_DK23BA-20] - :
: E6 - GMR head amplitude
: 98
: 97
==================================================

My 1 year warranty is up in 2 months. If the drive is bad, I need to get it returned. COMPAQ doesn't seem to be convinced it is a hardware failure. They say it's just windows. My concern grows because I had to exchange my notebook before it was a week old. The BIOS returned hard drive errors. (the original notebook was missing some of the stickers, and I've wondered if it was dropped). The replacement has been fine till now.

I also have Mandrake Linux 8.1 installed, and it doesn't have the delay, but has locked up when I plug my LinkSys CardBus NIC in (but that could be a software bug). Once I'm in, it's okay (but then again, I don't spend as near as much time in linux as I do windows).

I'm not sure what to think. Anyone have suggestions or ideas?

Thanks in advance

Jason

 

[dinosnake]

Linux may be defaulting to a slower drive interface to make up for hardware errors. What does the kernel report with hdparm? Also, what does the sysadmin error log report? Any errors there?

I does kind of, from here, sound like a drive problem.

BTW, one would think that the drive comes with Hitachi's warranty - which should be 3 years. If Compaq gives you grief about it contact Hitachi directly. Your mileage may vary...

 

[tisource]

I erased my partitions and decided to start over. I did an unconditional format, and .98 MB was in bad sectors.

I haven't reinstalled linux. When I do, I'll try out what you said. Linux seems to have no slowdowns. It seems to run pretty fast.

One thing I have noticed is that my machine doesn't beep at boot anymore (POST). I could have sworn it did before. I can get into the BIOS (Phoenix), and everything seems to look okay.

Hitachi says I must deal with Compaq and/or Circuit City before they will do anything about it. Compaq says there's nothing wrong with the drive. Circuit City says they won't cover it because its Compaq's job. What a mess!

I'm also worried if I send my notebook away it won't return in one piece. A lot of tech support places give you your machine back in worse shape than it came in.

What's the best thing to do?

 

[dinosnake]

Sorry to hear of your problems.

Well, tell Hitachi that you DID go through Compaq - and they are washing their hands of it. If Hitachi thinks that .98MB of bad sectors warrants replacement tell them that Compaq doesn't - and get them do to something.

I see this alot - not MY problem, yours / not my problem, it's YOURS. It's all too easy to pass the buck nowadays. Circuit City is jusy a retailer and with the length of time you have had the computer it truly should be warranty from the manufacturer. Compaq is the next stop with their 1 year all-parts warranty. Contact Hitachi again, but anonymously. Don't tell them about Compaq - talk to them as if you bought the drive only and it has .98MB of bad sectors. They'll tell you if it is within acceptable range or not. If not go back to Compaq and push, with the knowledge from Hitachi. THEN go to Hitachi if Compaq does nothing.

A Warranty is a legal contract. If Hitachi says replace and nobody does anything talk to the Better Business Buerau.

Know what you mean about inept service 'techs'. Most I've met I know a *hell* of a lot more than they do. Your mileage may vary...