Faulty Hitachi 7k60?

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

Hi all-

I'm experiencing a pretty perplexing issue with my Hitachi 7k60.

Back in November, I purchased the 7k60 for my Compaq x1015 laptop.
Things have been pretty rosy with it up until last week.

On Friday, I noticed the drive having some writing errors (via the Win
XP systray warning). I checked the Event Viewer and sure enough, there
were numerous read/write errors. To note, I wasn't doing anything
strenous with the laptop when this occurred - I was writing in Word
2003.

Once this happened, I rebooted and noticed that the laptop took
forever to do anything after this point - loading programs took nearly
twice as long. Most noticable was that any audio played by the laptop
would stutter horribly (as well as watching the disk thrash). I also
noticed that any time I switched between programs took a long time
(and hit the drive way too much).

At this point, I thought maybe the errors caused some severe
fragmentation, so I run defrag a few times. This didn't help at all. I
then re-installed the audio drivers - nada (I really didn't that would
help too much because programs were still taking exceptionally long
time to load - but I was desperate).

Finally, wondering if it was something wrong with the laptop itself, I
swapped the 7k60 with my original laptop drive. Bingo! That drive
works perfectly.

So, now I'm considering sending the 7k60 to Hitachi. But before I do
so, has anyone experienced this? I wondered also if the pagefile on
that drive became corrupted (is that possible?).

Anyway, if anyone has any idea around this, it would be appreciated.

TIA,
Paul

Specs:
Compaq x1015
Windows XP Home (SP1)
1GB RAM
Radeon 9200 64MB
DirectX 9.0b

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

Ahhhh- Yeah, I had a feeling that this was the case, but I didn't want to
rely on just a gut feeling.

Unfortunately, I don't have a floppy on the laptop, nor a USB floppy drive.
I guess I'll need to locate one in order run the DFT.

Thanks for your help....

-Paul


"Michael Geary" <Mike@DeleteThis.Geary.com> wrote in message
news:109kr6ua52g82ca@corp.supernews.com...
> There's no mystery here: The drive is dying.
>
> Do you have a floppy drive for your machine? If so, go here:
>
> http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm
>
> and download the Drive Fitness Test. Run the full media scan or the
> exerciser to get the error code, then go to Hitachi's warranty page to set
> up your warranty return.
>
> -Mike
>
> "Paul Marino" <paul.marino@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:c8a305a3.0405060836.b195210@posting.google.com...
> > Hi all-
> >
> > I'm experiencing a pretty perplexing issue with my Hitachi 7k60.
> >
> > Back in November, I purchased the 7k60 for my Compaq x1015 laptop.
> > Things have been pretty rosy with it up until last week.
> >
> > On Friday, I noticed the drive having some writing errors (via the Win
> > XP systray warning). I checked the Event Viewer and sure enough, there
> > were numerous read/write errors. To note, I wasn't doing anything
> > strenous with the laptop when this occurred - I was writing in Word
> > 2003.
> >
> > Once this happened, I rebooted and noticed that the laptop took
> > forever to do anything after this point - loading programs took nearly
> > twice as long. Most noticable was that any audio played by the laptop
> > would stutter horribly (as well as watching the disk thrash). I also
> > noticed that any time I switched between programs took a long time
> > (and hit the drive way too much).
> >
> > At this point, I thought maybe the errors caused some severe
> > fragmentation, so I run defrag a few times. This didn't help at all. I
> > then re-installed the audio drivers - nada (I really didn't that would
> > help too much because programs were still taking exceptionally long
> > time to load - but I was desperate).
> >
> > Finally, wondering if it was something wrong with the laptop itself, I
> > swapped the 7k60 with my original laptop drive. Bingo! That drive
> > works perfectly.
> >
> > So, now I'm considering sending the 7k60 to Hitachi. But before I do
> > so, has anyone experienced this? I wondered also if the pagefile on
> > that drive became corrupted (is that possible?).
> >
> > Anyway, if anyone has any idea around this, it would be appreciated.
> >
> > TIA,
> > Paul
> >
> > Specs:
> > Compaq x1015
> > Windows XP Home (SP1)
> > 1GB RAM
> > Radeon 9200 64MB
> > DirectX 9.0b
>
>