Dell Inspiron 1520 possible power issues

I have a Dell Inspiron 1520 still under warranty.

About a year ago I upgraded to a 500GB western digital hard drive model WD5000BEVT. This drive typically gets very positive reviews.

I got the hard drive and went with Windows XP 64-bit not in AHCI mode for the hard drive. Random sectors on the hard drive would become unreadable though. Or at least, the hard drive will come to a halt for many seconds while trying to read the sector and never return data.

The SMART data will mark the sector as "pending relocation" as part of the hard drive's defect management. The drive won't actually relocate the sector though unless there is a failed write. Since Windows has marked the sector as bad, it doesn't try and rewrite that sector, but reformatting or a zero write will. When the hard drive rewrites data to the sector, all is fine. The sector is not relocated and it is taken off of the pending sector relocation list.

Since the hard drive surface isn't actually bad, this indicates that the data within the sector on the hard drive, when it is unreadable anyway, fails the internal (transparent to the OS, built into the drive) ECC check and ECC isn't able to recover the data. Since this is all internal to the hard drive firmware and abstracted from the SATA interface, a computer wasn't even purposely write ECC failed data .. usually when there is an unrecoverable ECC failure, it is because the drive surface is bad. But that isn't the case here since rewriting the sector recovers it and it is fine after that.

Further proving this isn't a surface problem on the hard drive, I've had the drive replaced; twice. All 3 drives have exhibited the same problem.

Occasionally, I'll hear off sounds from the hard drive. If I do a surface scan after hearing this sounds sure enough I'll find bad sectors.

In this process, I moved to AHCI mode. I used the Intel drivers for this of course. And I moved to Windows 7. Many OS reinstalls, different partitioning, etc.

This issue will occur with the hard drive in the Dell and also with the hard drive connected through USB using an external USB enclosure.

I had one of my 2 genuine Dell power supplies go bad and after I got that replaced, the problems seemed to either go away or at least become much less frequent.

Now, the problem is more frequent again. It happened the other day when I have a 2nd hard drive hooked up through USB (a western digital passport that technically contains the same model 500 GB drive).

My speculation over the months has been that the Dell is somehow not providing the drive with consistent/needed power levels.

Today I couldn't read a file off my C drive so I had chkdsk run on startup. While chkdsk is running, at a certain stage maybe 20 minutes into the process (the process grinds to a near halt when it hits bad sectors) the system blue screens and reboots, only to repeat the same chkdsk process.

I decided to run chkdsk with /r instead of /b while I went to the gym tonight, figuring if it kept rebooting then fine.

I was being paranoid, but as I've suspected power issues I placed the computer somewhere where an electrical problem would be less likely to cause a fire. The computer was hooked to the AC/DC adapter when I left.

When I got home the computer was....off. I hit the power button and an oracle LED flashed for the power then nothing. The green light on the power adapter was off. I unplugged it and plugged it back in turning it green again (Dell power supplies must have resettable fuses). The battery, which should have had a full charge was very nearly dead (1 green light on the battery). I disconnected the AC/DC and removed the battery then put them both back and....the computer turns on again.

I'm pretty frustrated with this odd problem. I have 2 Dell AC/DC power supplies (one is the thin portable kind) and the problem seems to occur with both and both have been replaced besides.

There should be some voltage regulators within the computer, that for example step down the power from the 19.5v input to 5v for USB devices and hard drives, for example. Perhaps these voltage regulators are defective. They are probably on the motherboard, but maybe somebody can confirm.

I won't bother trying to explain this to Dell tech support. If I need a new motherboard then I'll make something up to get it replaced.

anyone have any ideas?

Thanks.

 

Having a hard time deciding what to do. Some of my options:

1. Call western digital support .. but that seems pretty hopeless
2. Get a new motherboard from Dell as the Dell doesn't seem to be providing stable sufficient 5v power
3. Buy a different drive model. The new 750GB from WD is tempting but more likely to have the same issues. Looks like newegg offers 640 GB from seagate and samsung as well.