Reflections on the death of a hard dive.

[iaccocca]

I have a laptop with a hard drive with bad sectors. The machine has gotten quite unstable even in Safe Mode, but I'm slowly getting the old stuff off. When I get my new drive, how do I get Windows 7 back on it? Are all drives created equal? Suggestions, please.

Computer is a Dell INSPIRON. I like the 'puter, I just need a new hard drive.

[benw]

1. download Clonezilla live, burn it to a CD

2. Get a Sata -> USB adapter kit, or a USB hard drive dock

3. Connect new hard drive to USB adapter or dock

4. Boot from the Clonezilla CD.

5. Clone old hard drive to new hard drive

6. Shutdown

7. Remove old hard drive, install new hard drive

8. Profit.

[OldGreen]

I have the USB hard drive doc if you want to borrow it.

[mattawajeep]

I wouldn't clone a dying hard drive - especially if the purpose is to salage an operation system. It's going to do nothing but cause you problems.

Lee, the computer didn't come with a Windows 7 disc? Check the disks that came with it, often times the windows reinstall disks for a Dell are purple or some other color and don't look like windows.

And no, not all hard drives are created equal, but if you get me the exact model number of your laptop I can reccomend a replacement. Model should be on a sticker on the bottom of the laptop.

[iaccocca]

Thanks guys. I have access to a dock ( I think). The Dell came with no discs. I made the reccommended backup discs (I think.) At least I know I tried to seems to me one of my last laptops refused to give up the backups. I hope it was the now dead HP. I'll post up the info soon to get advice on hard drive... posting from the Kindle Fire right now.

[commando14]

Is the laptop still under warranty? If so Dell will send you a new hard drive and will usually send the dell OEM W7 discs if you ask for them.. also you can request a copy of the disks on their site:http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dellcare/en/backupcd_form?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs

Get your files off if you can, (if windows is not booting up then you can boot from a PE disk to get your files) replace the drive and start with a fresh OS image, even using the Dell OEM W7 discs would be better than cloning from a failing hard disc with bad sectors... it might work out ok but it's not going to be able to copy everything over if it has bad sectors... so you'd be left with a unstable OS like you have now.

[benw]

I'm betting if it is booting at all the HD is still working well enough that you can clone it without issue.

You will have to scan the new drive for errors after the clone.

Whatever your plan is, stop using the drive until you are ready to execute your recovery. Every time you use it you run the risk of total failure or causing more corruption.

[iaccocca]

Okay. Done wheelin' for now, so time to go hard drive shopping. I appreciate all the help I've gotten so far by the way.

The computer is a Dell INSPIRON N7010.
Dell technical tells me the drive is a SATA 640 GIG 5400 RPM
HARD DRIVE..., 640, S2, 2.5, 5.4, P11, SMSN-M7E
The brand is Seagate.

[iaccocca]

Here is what I am considering.

Western Digital 640 GB Scorpio Blue SATA 3 Gb/s 5400 RPM 8 MB Cache

Thoughts?

[mattawajeep]

Here is what I am considering.

Western Digital 640 GB Scorpio Blue SATA 3 Gb/s 5400 RPM 8 MB Cache

Thoughts?

Checked it out on a couple other sites and the failure rate seems rather high, though it can be hard to tell with so few reviews.

I'm a bit busy atm, but I can do more checking later. If you want to do some browsing, just about any SATA 3GB/s 2.5" laptop drive will work. Check with new egg, google shopping, & tiger direct for additional reviews to get a better picture of quality.

[iaccocca]

Here is what I am considering.

Western Digital 640 GB Scorpio Blue SATA 3 Gb/s 5400 RPM 8 MB Cache

Thoughts?

Checked it out on a couple other sites and the failure rate seems rather high, though it can be hard to tell with so few reviews.

I'm a bit busy atm, but I can do more checking later. If you want to do some browsing, just about any SATA 3GB/s 2.5" laptop drive will work. Check with new egg, google shopping, & tiger direct for additional reviews to get a better picture of quality.

Thanks for the input. Yeah it looks like these WD are great or bad with a pretty high failure rate. I was shying away from Seagate, because that is what just failed me, but it gets better reliability reviews, so I will probably go that way.

Seagate Momentus 640 GB 5400RPM SATA 3Gb/s 8 MB Cache 2.5-Inch Internal Notebook Hard Drive

[iaccocca]

Is the laptop still under warranty?

No, and Dell brought the suck on this one. About 30 days out of warranty and they just said too bad, so sad and took about 3 hours to do it.

[iaccocca]

Good(ish) news on this front. The 'puter lives again with a restored operating system. Tomorrow we go hunting for our data.

Again, thanks for all the help.

[iaccocca]

UPDATE:

All pictures and most documents (Word / Excel etc.) have been recovered. The rest is gravy and I'm a happy camper.