Problem with Laptop Hard Drive

Hi all,

I have a problem with my Dell Inspiron 1501. I (accidentally) left it running back in May 2009 one day to which it overheated, resulting in SMART disk failures upon bootup. Basically the hard drive had burned out so I replaced it with a new one. The replacement hard drive was a 500 GB Western Digital which in the last few weeks, keeps freezing approximately 20 minutes after starting it up. I have had this new hard drive for just over a year now.

Logically I need another new hard drive, but my question is whether or not the actual laptop itself (possibly its motherboard) is contributing to this 2nd hard disk failure? Or are hard drive failures independent?

Thank you.

 

what does smart say about the new drive?

the cheapest way to diagnose is going to be getting an external usb case for it.
you could have cooked something though its possible.

 

That's not always true. I believe SMART goes through the SATA controller. So if your SATA controller was defective it could give you SMART errors if your drive could be perfectly healthy. Though quite rare, I've only see 2-3 cases like this. The only way to rule it out is putting a known good drive to rule out the motherboard/SATA controller.

 

Okay the SMART failure message only refers to the 1st hard drive that malfunctioned due to overheating. In other words, there is no SMART failure message when the 2nd hard drive is inserted. Infact I can bypass the SMART message for the 1st hard drive but likewise with the 2nd hard drive, it freezes approximately 30 minutes after loading the OS. My question basically refers to whether or not the actual laptop itself contributes in some way to these hard drives failing, more worringly to the 2nd hard drive as it is merely 1 year old?

Thanks for the replies.

 

Okay well looks like your 1st drive is about to fail or starting to fail. Backup the data and chuck that soon to be click o'death paperweight!