Dell Inspiron Hard Drive Issues / SMART Test

Forum Community,

I want to thank you in advanced for any technical help you are able to provide. After being given the run-around for the past month with the most miserable customer support experience of my life, I am reaching out to any of you who may be considered experts (of which I am not). I will get around to posting my customer service saga in the next few days, but long story short is that I will absolutely never recommend Dell to anyone ever again after the one too many stories of incompetence that I've experienced on the way to getting a functioning laptop. My situation remains unresolved and I am hoping that I might be able to get some suggestions from all of you.

I am driving an Inspiron 15 7537 (I fell in love with the slick look and an aluminum body). I received a laptop last month and after running a BIOS update I received a critical hard drive failure (on the 2nd day of ownership). After pleading with dell for hours they finally approved an exchange for a new system. The new system arrived yesterday and after updating the firmware and BIOS I again am receiving Hard Drive errors. I've updated the firmware and drivers and again have issues with the SMART Threshhold test. When the BIOS was updated did it change some of the Smart values and is this a false error? That is the big question I can't seem to figure out (but often times in the middle of working I will get a dialog box popping up saying Hard Drive failure). I find it hard to believe that I would get the exact same error twice. The funny thing is that when I check on the Dell official website under laptop reviews I am seeing other users complain of hard drive failure on this model as well.

Here are the Hard Drive Details:
Intel i7-4500 CPU @ 1.80 GHz
Seagate 1 TB (ST1000LM024 - HN-M101MBB)

Aside from that I've had horrible issues with the computer waking up from sleep mode (which I've seen in the owners thread is a common issue), but I believe that I've updated all the firmware and am still having problems.

At this point I wish I could just get my money back, but thought I would give it a day of troubleshooting on this forum before I call Dell India and rip them a new one in an attempt to initiate a return where I won't have to pay a ridiculous 15% restocking fee.

- Frustrated and Regretful Dell Owner
P.S. I will be checking this forum hourly today and will perform any additional diagnostics/data requested.

 

1,Raw Read Error Rate,51,100,100,OK,000000000000,0,Enabled
2,Throughput Performance,0,252,252,OK (Always passing),000000000000,0,Enabled
3,Spin Up Time,25,92,1,OK,0000000009C1,0,Enabled
4,Start/Stop Count,0,100,100,OK (Always passing),000000000021,0,Enabled
5,Reallocated Sectors Count,10,252,252,OK,000000000000,0,Enabled
7,Seek Error Rate,51,252,252,OK,000000000000,0,Enabled
8,Seek Time Performance,15,252,252,OK,000000000000,0,Enabled
9,Power On Time Count,0,100,100,OK (Always passing),000000000013,0,Enabled
10,Spin Retry Count,51,252,252,OK,000000000000,0,Enabled
11,Drive Calibration Retry Count,0,252,252,OK (Always passing),000000000000,0,Enabled
12,Drive Power Cycle Count,0,100,100,OK (Always passing),00000000002E,0,Enabled
13,Soft Read Error Rate,0,100,100,OK (Always passing),000000000000,0,Enabled
181,Vendor-specific,0,100,100,OK (Always passing),0000000673B0,0,Enabled
191,G-Sense Error Rate,0,252,252,OK (Always passing),000000000000,0,Enabled
192,Power off Retract Cycle Count,0,252,252,OK (Always passing),000000000000,0,Enabled
193,Load/Unload Cycle Count,0,100,100,OK (Always passing),000000000193,0,Enabled
194,Disk Temperature,0,64,56,OK (Always passing),002C0014001B,0,Enabled
195,Hardware ECC Recovered,0,100,100,OK (Always passing),000000000000,0,Enabled
196,Reallocation Event Count,0,252,252,OK (Always passing),000000000000,0,Enabled
197,Current Pending Sector Count,0,252,252,OK (Always passing),000000000000,0,Enabled
198,Off-Line Uncorrectable Sector Count,0,252,252,OK (Always passing),000000000000,0,Enabled
199,Ultra ATA CRC Error Count,0,200,200,OK (Always passing),000000000000,0,Enabled
200,Write Error Rate,0,100,100,OK (Always passing),000000000009,0,Enabled
240,Head Flying Hours,0,100,100,OK (Always passing),000000000010,0,Enabled
241,Total LBA Written,0,95,94,OK (Always passing),0000007BBBDA,0,Enabled
242,Total LBA Read,0,99,94,OK (Always passing),00000025F6F7,0,Enabled
254,Free Fall Event Count,0,100,100,OK (Always passing),000000000002,0,Enabled

I went ahead and downloaded HDSentinel to run the SMART Test offered with that program. Passed with flying colors. The SMART Tes offered by Dell has me failing the Threshhold Test (ID 3). Is there anyway to check that the assigned values are that would result in failure on this test? It seems like it isn't the actual hard drive...

 

uhhh I have the latest BIOS on my 7537 but everything is running fine.If you have prob with the latest one, can you just do a clean install and keep the old BIOS then? I'm not a tech geek so I really don't know how to read your results. But if you don't wanna keep the machine, I'd recommend you return it while still can. Good luck, pal!

 

Ugh - I need the luck. I found an old BIOS and reverted back - that didn't fix the problem so I put it back to A07 (current version). Downloaded Seagate's utility and it also is indicating failure...

What are the chances that after two laptops I would have the exact same hard drive error down the the very exact ID code? I have a third drive that should be delivered tomorrow and I am going to check it out. Worst case scenario I probably won't return the laptop...might just go out and purchase an SSD. Too nervous to send Dell anything back in fear that I won't get my money refunded. If anyone else has feedback let me know.

 

Did u have a chance to really use the laptop for an extended amount of time? Except for the issue with hard drive, is the laptop up to ur expectations? If so then I'll say go get an SSD which is now priced very reasonably. Also, a clean win installation might fix most probs you have now. I never had anything with the sleep wake function and I didn't change any settings at all so I'm not sure why lots of people are having this issue

 

Did you run a chkdsk?

 

I'm a noob who doesn't know what that is

 

run command prompt in admin mode, type chkdsk /r and let it run.

 

Update: Received a replacement Hard Drive from Dell today (Seagate 1 TB HDD). Self-installed and everything is running smooth. Seems weird that the previous two HDD's had issues, but third time is a charm. I wonder if a whole batch of Hard Drives for this laptop were flawed after reading a lot of comments on the Dell website. For now I am going to stick to the HDD and see how it runs with the I7. Hopefully speed is enough so that Photoshop can run smoothly.