Bad hard drive drivers?

[bobthemagicmoose]

I have an Asus ul80vt laptop and just swapped out the hard drive to a Samsung HN-M101MBB (Spinpoint M8 1TB). Since doing so the computer will randomly lock up. Sometimes it will get out of it, sometimes it won't.

As is usually the case with hdd problems, everything works fine but when I do something that will access the drive (trying to open a program, open a new tab, open an email etc) that application will freeze. Trying to open up the task manager is impossible as well. After a while I get a small dialog box telling me that windows is not responding. The hdd activity light is going the whole time. I don't get a BSOD and when I boot up there is nothing on the event viewer (aside from the unexpected shutdown).

Does this sound like a problem with the disk or drivers? How can I find out? I have reformatted twice already and this intermittent problem hasn't been fixed.

Thanks!

 

[skaz]

After you reinstalled windows 7 did you reinstall all the drivers listed for your laptop?

http://www.asus.com/Notebooks/Superior_Mobility/UL80Vt/#download

 

[bobthemagicmoose]

the previous install I'm pretty sure I did a factory restore, but this time I just used a windows 7 disk to avoid the littany of bloatware. I will try to see if any drivers are lacking...

 

[skaz]

Good choice with the clean install to avoid the crapware. See how things work out after the driver updates.

 

[bobthemagicmoose]

Installed recent drivers but still have problems, though happen less frequently. I guess I'll just manage and save often. Thanks

 

[TotalInferno]

Hey, interestingly, I replaced a 500gb WD Scorpio with this Samsung 1TB in my dell laptop and am having similar problems. Chrome will sit there saying "waiting for cache", the computer is still responding, but if I try to do anything that needs HDD access, eventually I will lockup the entire system.

 

[bobthemagicmoose]

TotalInferno, have you found a way to reproduce this problem? I ran the seatools tests and all "passed." Without a way to reproduce the error, when I send in the drive for warranty I am confident they will just run these tests and send the drive back to me (with costs).

 

[TotalInferno]

Bob, this is exactly my dilemma:

1) I did run the "dell diagnostics" built in on a separate partition - no errors
2) I can't reproduce it at will -- however usually I noticed that chrome triggers the lockup (this could just be because I primarily use chrome on this laptop)
3) I had dell come and replace the original hard drive after I imaged to the new one, so I am thinking I will pull out the 1TB and put it in an external caddy, and switch back to the wd scorpio 500gb that was replaced

I personally believe the problem is a firmware/etc incompatibility with the samsung -- I don't think it is the particular drive I have, but just the model in general I looked for firmware updates, but could not find any.

 

[TotalInferno]

Here is someone else complaining. When I get home I'll run seatools, and see if I get any errors.

http://forums.storagereview.com/index.php/topic/30195-samsung-spinpoint-m8-review-discussion/page__st__20

 

[bobthemagicmoose]

I called them and mine is still under warranty so I am just going to get it replaced (no questions asked...) Not as good as a full refund, but I am optimistic. Thanks for the update.