Disk Drive Problems

[saul1664]

About a week ago, my hard disk drive started making what can only be described as high pitched tinny/clinking/clattering type sounds accompanied with a blue screen (which has appeared 2 more times since then) telling me that my computer has shut down to stop further damage and on rebooting telling me that I had a hard disk error advising me to back up information on hard drive (haven't because I have 80GB on there and have no idea how to get that onto removable media) and to run scandisk.

Scandisk will not work (scans the disk) and tells me it can't complete, defragmenting the drive brings up the blue screen, and several diagnostic programs downloaded to check the state of the disk drive show no problems though there obviously is.

What is happening and what can I do about it (assume a bad sector somewhere?).

This shouldn't be happening, the computer is just one year old, a Compaq Pressario and the hard drive is Western Digital WD1200BB. Is it on the way out already. I have a 5 year warranty on the computer, so do I replace it now or is there something else I can do.

Saul

[max75]

You could try making a Ghost to another harddrive (use sector by sector methode if the filesystem is corrupt. This would save most of your data.

The BB versions of the Western Digital drives have a standard warranty of 2 years and should survive for that period at least. But with all mechanical things, it can break due to a production or handling error.

At the website of WD you can download a harddrive testing util. PLace it on a bootable flop and run the tests to figure out what is wrong.

You probably get an error code. You can call your supplier or HP-Compaq with this code together with your problem description. They should replace the harddrive.