Inspiron 8600 laptop HDD issues

[macewank]

Had a HDD appear to crap out on me in my girlfriends laptop several months back.. Booted it up one day and got "Primary Hard Disk Drive 0 Failure. No bootable device available"

Threw a brand new IDE drive in and after a month or so of use, same thing happened..

it's been sitting collecting dust since, but now she wants it fixed and i haven't a clue where to begin..

if i throw the restore disc in, the Windows install finds the drive, but won't write to it.. I'm stumped

Any ideas?

 

[robisbell]

sounds like a dying Motherboard, got a few hundred to buy a new motherboard for it? if it crapped out on 2 HDD's, I'd tell her she needs a new laptop or regular desktop.

I just checked you're looking at about $260 for a motherboard. the laptop resells in full working order used for $400.

 

[jackschmittusa]

Don't see why the mb would kill a hd, especially twice with a month of running in between.

Does it get particularly hot?

Try re-installing the os. It may only be reporting that it cannot find the boot files.

 

[macewank]

Originally posted by: jackschmittusa
Don't see why the mb would kill a hd, especially twice with a month of running in between.

Does it get particularly hot?

Try re-installing the os. It may only be reporting that it cannot find the boot files.

OS reinstall isn't an option.. the boot cd can see the HDD but won't read it or write to it (booting into the System REcovery thing, for example, and typing "FORMAT C:" results in a invalid disk error.. Also, the drive isn't even listed in BIOS so the machine doesn't know it's there apparently

that said, could it be the motherboard? seems odd that it would accept a HDD for X period of time and then reject it.. I suppose if i had another drive sitting around i'd throw it in and check but i'm clean out of laptop IDE drives.

What are the odds the drives themselves are fried?

 

[robisbell]

slim. if they were bad the bios would still see them. I think it's the motherboard.

 

[jackschmittusa]

Check the connections on the drive. Running on wall current I hope. Is the 120v cable just a cord or a power brick?

You could get a 2½" - 3½" drive adapter pretty cheap or a 2½" external case with USB to test the drive in a desktop rig.

Edit: I saw it is a power brick. Does it run with the battery out with it plugged into the wall? If not, then power always runs from the battery, and a really weak battery might not power the hd.

 

[Slowlearner]

I had purchased a Inspiron 8600 for my son in 2004 and he was pretty happy with it. Of course the battery died long ago. Last year one the screen hinges jammed and it was difficult to open and close. Couple of letter keys also came off - I didn't feel it was worth fixing and purchased a new Toshiba Satellite laptop for him.

On a whim, I decided to call Dell and find out how much it would cost to have it fixed, and was told if the screen wasn't broken the repair charge is a flat 150$+tax. So I decided to do it - they will have it picked up - and it came back after two weeks with some minor problems and so I sent it back and it was returned within a week fixed. And from what I can tell they replaced the motherboard, graphics card and the power adapter. It looks and feels new.

My son took one look at it and returned the Toshiba (blame Vista). So If you are not in a hurry a depot (Memphis) repair may be an option to consider.

Incidentally, unlike Dell Toshiba has repair shops lined up in almost every major city. In case of problems during the warranty period just take it to the nearest shop - seems like great convenience for most laptop users.

 

[Skewer324]

If the second IDE drive was new, you should be able to make a warranty claim after it crapped out after just one month.

It is likely the motherboard that's giving the drives problems, but it's not statistically impossible for them both to just have developed bad sectors.

And Robisbell, I've seen bad hard drives that the BIOS does not detect. It's rare, but it's not unheard of.