is bad HDD causing this? Or is something else wrong?

Lumia925

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My old HP laptop's cooling fan died and I decided to get it repaired by a local repair person because HP was asking too much money. The guy replaced the fan all right, but screwed up the entire computer, the touchpad stopped working, the headphones jack stopped working, the accelerometer for auto-head parking in case of sudden motion-stopped working, and even the HDD activity indicator won't light up. I gave it back to him and he managed to fix all these problems free of charge. But ever since, the computer locks up/ slows down randomly, and the HDD indicator stays up, for like a second or so, and it would work again. This cycle keeps repeating. I re-installed windows but the problem is not solved. Checked HDSentinel, and I have increasing values for "188 command time out" in smart (was zero just a few days back, is 16 now). Also a very high value for "Power off retract cycle count". The HDD has a power-on time of 14959 hours-so it's pretty old. It has 41 re-allocated sectors too. The repair guy keeps telling me that the HDD needs to be replaced. But HDSentinel tells me that command time-outs are caused by bad power supply/data cable. Do you think replacing the HDD will solve this problem? Or has the repair guy screwed up some connections inside the laptop? I have had these reallocated sectors earlier too (had 39, now it's 41), but have never had performance problems & system slowdowns before he replaced the fan. What shall I do? Thanks..
PS:Would it help if I post the entire HDSentinel SMART report page?
OS: Windows 8.1 Pro RAM: 8 GB, HDD: about 50 GB free on C:\, Processor: 2nd generation core i3.
I ran a full SMART Extended SelfTest, using HDSentinel, and it PASSED without errors.

 
Solution
Hi there Lumia925,

I don't really know whether he fixed all the other issues, though such slow downs can be caused by the drive. The increasing number of reallocated sectors means that some bad sectors appear on the drive. You can not really stop this process. The drive will eventually fail. So, I would advise you to back up the important data that is on the drive.
To sum it up: most probably replacing the drive will improve the computer's performance.
Regarding the "Power off retract cycle count", I would say that this attribute does not directly affect the condition of the drive. Check this out: http://www.hdsentinel.com/smart/smartattr.php

Cheers,
D_Know_WD
Hi there Lumia925,

I don't really know whether he fixed all the other issues, though such slow downs can be caused by the drive. The increasing number of reallocated sectors means that some bad sectors appear on the drive. You can not really stop this process. The drive will eventually fail. So, I would advise you to back up the important data that is on the drive.
To sum it up: most probably replacing the drive will improve the computer's performance.
Regarding the "Power off retract cycle count", I would say that this attribute does not directly affect the condition of the drive. Check this out: http://www.hdsentinel.com/smart/smartattr.php

Cheers,
D_Know_WD
 
Solution
The Command Time-Out errors are probably related to bad sectors rather than bad cabling. To me it suggests that the drive is having difficulty retrying a particular sector after encountering a read error.

It could be that the failure of the cooling fan contributed to the drive's problems. What does HD Sentinel report for the RAW values of the temperature attributes?
 

Lumia925

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Thanks D_Know_WD :)
I got the HDD replaced! The old one was a Toshiba. The one I got now is a
Western Digital WDC WD5000LPVX
And the issue is instantly resolved! There are no more lags and freezes, it works like new!
Thanks again :)
 

Lumia925

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Oct 16, 2014
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Thanks Fzabkar :)
You're right, it was probably the HDD doing something weird, got it replaced and everything is normal now :)
Don't remember the old HDD's temperature, but the new HDD is at 28 degrees C, according to HDSentinel. I ran an extended self test on the new HDD, and everything is ok. Its status is reported as "perfect", and there are ZERO reallocated sectors :)