HP Pavilion (15 months old) - hard drive going to fail - Got a new one coming and the recovery disks..

Is this gonna be a pita to change out/install? Or should I have my son do it?



And just WHY do hard drives only last a year or so??

Desktop HD install is easy, anyboyd can do it. If it's laptop, that's a bt more difficult but doable at home also.

OK, looked it up, apparently laptop. Do a search on it, there could be a how to for your model somewhere on youtbe or such. Some HD can be replaced just by pullng them out.


http://pcrepaircourse.blogspot.com/2010/08/hp-pavilion-n5445-hard-drive.html

This is a desktop - so it should be a piece of cake.. IIRC, I just open up the case, (power cord unplugged, naturally), find the hard drive (easy), ground myself and pull out the wiring plug, remove a few screws and reverse the process for the new one..

That's the easy part. - then it's gonna take a few days to restore all the data and load software.. Grrr..

Damned PCs - nearly hafta replace 'em every year to keep 'em going..

How do you know the HD is failing?

Invest in a cheap external HD. You can get a 1Tb drive for under $60. Use it as a back-up for cases just like this. It plugs into one of your available USB ports. Copy your OS and files to it then transfer to the new HD when installed.

Message comes up warning me of imminent hard drive failure.. I've had my suspicions that's the case for a while now anyway..

I tried a few 'cheap' external hard drives and THEY lasted only a few months and turned into, um, used electronic parts.. The WORST one was a Western Digital.. What a pos..

Nope. BTDT, never again.. I got a full set of recovery disks for $16 and Carbonite's backing up all the other files.. I should be good to go once this new HD is put in place..

Might use the old one for target practice..

That sounds more like spyware or a virus. I work in IT and have never seen anything like that. Can you do a screen shot and post it?

I've never seen a warning screen either....just hum along and one day the blue screen of death.

Hard drives should last much more than 18 months unless you leave it running full time in a dusty room. I have seen them fail though.. even in big storage arrays from top name vendors you get a few that fail out.

Swapping drives is easy, reinstalling the O/S is a pain in the neck. Figure on most of a full day of applying updates, rebooting, applying updates, rebooting, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. Put antivirus software on immediately after the reinstall is finished before you start doing updates. It will slow things down, but it's better than getting infected and having to repeat the entire process in a couple of weeks or months.

+1 on external hard drive to back your stuff up to.

Many newer computers have disk monitoring built in.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsuppor...prodTypeId=321957&objectID=c01443502

I don't know what you do to 'puters but mine is 8 years old and still on the original HD, and all the other components. I do use dry air to blow all the dust out once a month as well as file cleaning app & defrag.

I don't know why you are having so many hard drive problems. We have an external hard drive that has been going for over 4 years now without a problem. Laptop is over 5 years.

Ernie

I was at our local range one evening when a gentleman pulled in, placed a PC, keyboard, and monitor on large boulder bounding the parking lot, and had at it with near a full box of 12ga #4's. He subsequently gathered up and dumpstered all the pieces, loaded up, and left without ever uttering a word.

I sense he was dealing with some similar frustration.

Just put this pc together not long ago and out of nowhere my SSD that I put the OS and a few programs on red-lined.

Did a little digging and found it was Google Earth doing it. I had to uninstall and reinstall a few times along with dumping the memory and hd cache in Google Earth options regularly..also decreased the allowable amount.

Google Earth is having problems with this according to Google Search.

There are two camps on leaving the computer on 24/7 or shutting down every day. I do the latter, what do you guys do?

Shut down.

Ernie

.

I already called HP and they verified that the disk is going.. This PC is in my shop and yes, it's dusty/dirty in here and it's in use at least 8-10 hours/day all week long..

I'm lucky that way... (NOT)

Actually had TWO external hard drives and both took a dump before the PC's hard disk failed.. Those things, in my case anyway, are simply a waste of money, time and aggravation..

Computer's trying to do a full backup right now. I tried yesterday and the 'backup failed'.. Probably because the HD's going to pot.. I'll find out soon enough.

Shut down, and I'm typing this on a 10 year old workstation.

I had a newer unit that I always shut down too. A year ago a coworker thought he would do me a favor and turned it on in my absence for an overnight software download. When I returned in the AM I noticed it was powered up, but a surge had fried the motherboard.

10 min job to change it out , you will lose all the stuff on the present hard drive if you don't have it backed up on another disk drive or online site like Norton

Kinda figured that.. (10 mn job).

I'm using Carbonite - so it's all backed up off-site..

Is it a dv6?

I had one of those go TU. I wonder if HP has a recall?

Got 3 dv6's - bought one for myself last year for consulting on the side, one for my son as high school graduation present for college, other for my sister-in-law to use as a work at home computer.

All working fine so far.

What happened with yours?

I have an HP laptop that the HP software started giving me the hard drive failure warning. I used Belarc advisor and found out it was a Western Digital drive, downloaded the WD diagnosis and repair softwares (Data Lifeguard), ran their 'fix it' software from a CD and the HP software no longer gives me any warning. This has been about 6 months or so since. The laptop used to freeze up often and if I installed Sp1 (for Win7) it would freeze constantly.

I DID back all valuable data prior to running the repair software though just to be safe. It no longer freezes either.

Did you know as long as you have your key code, (Belarc can help here if your sticker is worn/lost), you did not need to order the recovery disks. Since Win Vista, you can download each respective OS, be it Home, Premium, Enterprise, Pro etc, ALL OS'es are free and legal to download on the www so you can reload your operating system.

If there's room in the box, you can also add a 2d hard drive. It's fairly simple to install and it will show up on My Computer as another drive. Use it for backups and storage.

Before the drive fails completely you need to get a second hard drive and do what is called an Image Backup. This will make a mirror image copy of your current hard disk (operating system, programs, data etc.). You then install the new hard disk and restore Image Backup and you are ready to go.

I would suggest investing in an external HD enclosure that has a USB 3.0 interface. Use this for backup along with Acronis backup software. Doing a full system restore over the internet will be SLOW. You can buy a USB 3.0 card to install in your current PC if it does not have USB 3.0 connections.

Windows 7 Image Backup

BTW, buy a can of compressed air for cleaning PC's. Open up yours about once a month and blow all the dust out of it. You can find it at Walmart or Target. That is probably the source of your premature HD failures. The excess dust inside your PC causes components to overheat.

P.S. Don't use your shop air compressor. Too much air pressure and it probably has oil in it.