Weird HDD Problem

[xxviktor]

Hello, I am having problems outta my HDD...I have a HP Pavilion ze4560us Laptop with a 40 GB Toshiba MK4021GAS HDD, 512 MB DDR-RAM, AMD-ATH-M 1.87Ghz CPU with Windows XP. I belive my hard drive is going out...What happoned is my Windows started acting odd.. locking up allot, freezing allot, explorer crashing, etc...and when each event happoned the drive would lock up or somthin and I would havta turn off the computer. I could hear it churning like grind-stop-grind-stop, over and over very fast, like it was stuck. It got to the point to where I couldnt even boot windows cause of some file being corrupted or somthing, I cant remmeber. But I was going to format the drive and reinstall Windows XP. When I tried to format with the XP setup disk it would say the disk is damnaged or inproperly inserted or somthin like that. But I tried many times and it would never work. So I put the computer away till I could afford a new hard drive. But today I got bored and figured I would mess with it again. Weirdly I put the XP setup disk in and it formated and installed fine! But again im having the same problems with the lockups and the drive being stuck. I really need this computer cause im tired of using this crap one, lol. So please anyone who has any idea of what I can do pleaseee post!

Thanx everyone in advance!


p.s. Could there be any drive diagnostic or repair utility that could possibly help me??? Hope I wont havta buy a new drive... Sad...Also Ive been to the toshiba website, no help...and Ive tried low level formatting and checking for back clusters...didnt work. thanks!!

 

[wolluf]

xxviktor - buy a new drive! Its obvious yours is damaged and its only a matter of time before its completely dead - so why would you want to get all your stuff on it?

 

[KiloZ]

I agree with wolluf - buy a new drive!

I would recommend getting all your important data off the drive first, if possible. Can you burn your important files (pictures, music, movies, address books, etc) to CD or DVD? If so, do it. Or you could do it via an external USB HDD. Either way, try to save your important files first.

All great accomplishments were once considered impossible.

 

[xxviktor]

Thanks guys, there is nothing important on the drive cause I low level formatted it , heh. I guess ill havta buy a new drive...

 

[garebo]

One suggestion, if you dont mind. Laptop hard drives are fairly expensive so heres one way to go. Get yourself the smallest laptop hard drive to handle your os and programs. Then buy an external usb drive on which you can put your data. That way you can keep your data safer and transfer your data to another pc if you should wish to. And also, whenever you decide to get rid of your laptop, you can keep the external drive for your new pc or laptop.
Also, instead of buying a new hard drive, you can get yourself registered for free at a couple sites that are like this one but have a buy\sell\trade computer section.
There you can get a good used drive for your laptop at a much lower price. You can start out at anandtech, a real good name, then go to tech imo, and look around for people with a large number of posts, tell them nork sent you, thats me, and they will help you out and keep things safe for you. Im not active there at the moment, will be next month.



Good advice + great people = tek-tips