Hard drive dying when changing OS ?

[666999555777]

Hi everyone, I'm a newomer!

I purchased a HP Pavilion DV6515eo about four months ago and since it shipped with Vista pre-installed and many of my programs and applications started to behave very strange or not at all, I decided to downgrade to Windows XP.
What I didn't know back then was that XP doesn't support sata without user-provided drivers. The result was that I got a 'hard drive not found' error message prior to the formatting process. Later on I found sata drivers, but they seemed to be slightly different from the ones used by my hardware because I got a blue screen upon booting into windows and then the computer would restart.
I installed Vista Ultimate instead and this worked. The only issue was that I started hearing clicking noises from the harddrive, lock-ups, eventlog errors about bad blocks and finally the operating system could not be found.

I returned the computer, got it repaired with a new harddrive inserted and everything went on flawlessly. I then decided to install XP again and this time with correct drivers for everything and I have not recieved any errors at all. However, the clicking noises are back and I wonder, how in the world can the change of OS cause a hard drive to go crazy??

Any helt is greatly Appreciated!

 

[Freestone]

Assuming your original hard drive was actually replaced, most likely you have run into two bad hard drives. The other possiblity is a faulty power supply killing the drives, but that is hard to prove.

You may want to question the repair policy. Dell and Lenovo will replace failing units, being hard drives, monitors or whatever, with refurbished parts. Perhaps it was the same in your case?

 

[wahnula]

I returned the computer, got it repaired with a new harddrive inserted

Are you POSITIVE that the drive was changed??? I mean, did you record the serial # of the old drive (available from manufacturer's utility and other means beside removal) and check it against the new one? Chances are you got the same drive back with the software problem fixed or the drive's bad sectors reassigned.

Also, you can usually get Vista SATA drives to work with XP by going into the BIOS and setting "SATA as IDE" or "compatibility mode".

Or, it may just be a noisy drive. But, as a rule, a clicking drive (especially the rhythmic tick, tick, tick) is usually a sign of impending drive failure.

Tony

"Buy what you like, or you'll be forced to like what you buy"...me

 

[paparazi]

I agree with the others and say that this is either the same drive or an unfortunate coincidence of two failures.
I recently purchased an HP laptop that failed to write backup recovery disks (Vista Business Edition) it only gives you the one chance.
On complaining to HP/Compaq they imediately posted out genuine backup disks for Vista plus utilities and drivers.
Point is..it is rare nowadays to actually get backup disks but when pressed most manufacturers will send you them in the post IF accompanied by a valid reason for do so.
As for your particular issue, send it back again and state forcefully that this is the second similar problem and you want a new replacement drive (it may/may not have an influence) but generally if they get a moaning customer they realize that it is in their best interest to minamize the potential for "come back" so repairs are often more thorough.
Martin

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