Hard Drive Woes

Archived from groups: comp.sys.hp.hardware (More info?)

On the seventh day, Leigh Freston wrote...

> I have an HP a730n Desktop Pavilion that was purchased last October. The
> original hard drive crashed in February and was replaced by HP. The
> replacement hard drive crashed this week, and HP is once again sending out a
> replacement. Although I'm grateful for the replacements, I'd like to try to
> figure out the cause of these hard drive failures. HP attributes most hard
> drive failures to the computer not shutting down properly. There were only a
> couple of instances of this occurring due to weather-related issues. I have
> other computers in the house that are doing just fine. I asked HP if a
> faulty power supply could be to blame and they told me that generally there
> would be motherboard problems if the power supply was causing these
> failures. I was also wondering if the tower is getting too warm...right
> after the last failure, I went into the BIOS and the hardware monitor stated
> that the CPU temp was around 51°C/125°F. I went to the hardware monitor
> again this evening right after starting the computer, and the monitor
> reported a temp of 47°C with a CPU fan speed of 1734 rpm and a system fan
> speed of 2665 rpm. Could the internal temp be causing the hard drives to
> crash? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. I'd like to remedy the
> problem before the new hard drive arrives.

Hello, Leigh,

it's always a good idea to find out what's causing problems in the first
place. I am not very familiar to your specific model, though. Besides, you
forgot to mention your hard drive model. I'd suggest, you post this
information.

A good start to troubleshoot is to check the failure on your last drive. Do
you think you could just run a knoppix based live cd on your PC with your
old drive attached (if it is found by your PC's BIOS that is) and run
"smartctl -a /dev/hda" (minus quotes)? Then post the results, please (only
the table is important).

As to temperature: it's always possible that temperature is an issue.
However, you said you found 51°C for your CPU in BIOS monitor, that's
pretty good. That doesn't say much about the general temperature in your
casing, but you could guess your system is healthy.

--
mit freundlichen Grüßen/with kind regards
Christian Dürrhauer, Institute of Geography, FU Berlin

You carry the fate of us all little one. - Boromir

Archived from groups: comp.sys.hp.hardware (More info?)

Thanks for trying to help me, but unfortunately the old hard drive is
already on its way back to HP. In the meantime, I've discovered that I
haven't been running ScanDisk or Defrag enough. I guess that could be part
of my problem. Thanks again!

Leigh

"Christian Dürrhauer" <cduerr@geog.fu-berlin.de> wrote in message
news:5dhx3rey6lk7$.dlg@73137.user.dfncis.de...
> On the seventh day, Leigh Freston wrote...
>
> > I have an HP a730n Desktop Pavilion that was purchased last October. The
> > original hard drive crashed in February and was replaced by HP. The
> > replacement hard drive crashed this week, and HP is once again sending
out a
> > replacement. Although I'm grateful for the replacements, I'd like to try
to
> > figure out the cause of these hard drive failures. HP attributes most
hard
> > drive failures to the computer not shutting down properly. There were
only a
> > couple of instances of this occurring due to weather-related issues. I
have
> > other computers in the house that are doing just fine. I asked HP if a
> > faulty power supply could be to blame and they told me that generally
there
> > would be motherboard problems if the power supply was causing these
> > failures. I was also wondering if the tower is getting too warm...right
> > after the last failure, I went into the BIOS and the hardware monitor
stated
> > that the CPU temp was around 51°C/125°F. I went to the hardware monitor
> > again this evening right after starting the computer, and the monitor
> > reported a temp of 47°C with a CPU fan speed of 1734 rpm and a system
fan
> > speed of 2665 rpm. Could the internal temp be causing the hard drives to
> > crash? Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. I'd like to remedy the
> > problem before the new hard drive arrives.
>
> Hello, Leigh,
>
> it's always a good idea to find out what's causing problems in the first
> place. I am not very familiar to your specific model, though. Besides, you
> forgot to mention your hard drive model. I'd suggest, you post this
> information.
>
> A good start to troubleshoot is to check the failure on your last drive.
Do
> you think you could just run a knoppix based live cd on your PC with your
> old drive attached (if it is found by your PC's BIOS that is) and run
> "smartctl -a /dev/hda" (minus quotes)? Then post the results, please (only
> the table is important).
>
> As to temperature: it's always possible that temperature is an issue.
> However, you said you found 51°C for your CPU in BIOS monitor, that's
> pretty good. That doesn't say much about the general temperature in your
> casing, but you could guess your system is healthy.
>
> --
> mit freundlichen Grüßen/with kind regards
> Christian Dürrhauer, Institute of Geography, FU Berlin
>
> You carry the fate of us all little one. - Boromir

Archived from groups: comp.sys.hp.hardware (More info?)

"Leigh Freston" <LnotFreston@peoplepc.com> wrote in message
news:7AmNe.6656$RZ2.5369@newsread3.news.atl.earthlink.net...
> Thanks for trying to help me, but unfortunately the old hard drive is
> already on its way back to HP. In the meantime, I've discovered that I
> haven't been running ScanDisk or Defrag enough. I guess that could be part
> of my problem. Thanks again!
>
> Leigh

I seriously doubt that frequent scanning (chkdsk) and defragging a hard
drive is going to have any impact on it's longevity.