Toshiba Hard Disk Failing

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33coupe

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#153941 13-Oct-2014 13:54

My Toshiba Sat Pro L650 (PSK1KA-04102T) seems to be slowly dying on me.

For a few months I would randomly get a blue screen stating an error had occured, and the laptop needed restarting.

Then I had a message stating the battery needed replacing (no big deal).

And recently I kept getting the message that my 'windows has detected a problem, hard disk failing, back up now' etc.

I ran chkdsk, and there didnt appear to be any issues.

So I ran the windows software and backed up 500gb on an external hard drive. I ran superAntispyware & Malwarebytes (one of which picked up a trojan).

I got quite annoyed with the message (windows detect a problem) popping up every 5 minutes, I clicked 'Do Not Show this Message Again'. I regret doing this, because now I am unsure if it is ok or not.

Saying that, after starting the laptop, it takes about 5-10mins to open windows live mail or even google chrome.

Can anyone answer the following:

1) How do I turn on the windows message to let me know about the hard disk failing?

2) Now that Ive backed everything up (I hope), can/should I format the hard drive?

3) or should I just buy another hard drive?

Thanks

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#1152846 13-Oct-2014 14:00

If your computer is just crashing you are probably going to get disk errors. The drive is a symptom of the real problem.

richms

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#1152853 13-Oct-2014 14:06

Buy new drive. Preferably a ssd.

Richard rich.ms

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#1152862 13-Oct-2014 14:12

Install HDD Sentinel, its been great for me at work, throw a drive into the external dock and get instant information in the drive. See what it makes of your drive, and go from there.

Personally, I find that when the Toshiba and Hitachi branded drives start giving errors, its time to swap them out for something else.

XPD / Gavin

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33coupe

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#1152902 13-Oct-2014 14:57

Thanks for the replies. I just tried Sentinel and I got this:

'Failure Predicted - Attribute: 5 Reallocated Sectors Count, Count of sectors moved to the spare area. Indicate problem with the disk surface or the read/write heads.
There are 1949 bad sectors on the disk surface. The contents of these sectors were moved to the spare area.
Based on the number of remapping operations, the bad sectors may form continuous areas.
Replace hard disk immediately.
It is recommended to backup immediately to prevent data loss.'

I guess this is the end. I'm just trying to decide if I should try a format, or continue using it until it gives up.

An SSD would be nice, but too expensive and not enough GB for my needs.

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#1152907 13-Oct-2014 15:03

Laptop drives generally fail because of handling the laptop while the drive is operating. A SSD protects you from that in the future.

IME using a failing drive makes the computer run like crap, and then you have the need to constantly be backing up - OK if you have crashplan etc on the machine, but again, all that reading with the background backups on a dying drive will just slow the machine to a crawl.

Richard rich.ms

33coupe

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#1153000 13-Oct-2014 16:45

Ive had a quick look and found these:

Can anyone confirm if any of these are any good? Im not sure if I should be concerned with Cache or RPM etc?

http://www.elive.co.nz/western-digital-scorpio-750gb-drive.php

http://www.playtech.co.nz/afawcs0139235/CATID=233/ID=20862/SID=262603254/productdetails.html

http://www.playtech.co.nz/afawcs0139235/CATID=233/ID=20304/SID=940434534/productdetails.html#Specification

http://www.pbtech.co.nz/index.php?z=p&p=HDDWD6704&qr=priceme

http://www.nzgameshop.com/internal-hard-drives/hitachi-0j22423-travelstar-7k1000-1tb-2-5-inch-hard-drive-sata-6gbs-7200rpm-32mb-buffer

Thanks

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#1153237 14-Oct-2014 00:58

33coupe: Ive had a quick look and found these:

Can anyone confirm if any of these are any good? Im not sure if I should be concerned with Cache or RPM etc?

http://www.elive.co.nz/western-digital-scorpio-750gb-drive.php

http://www.playtech.co.nz/afawcs0139235/CATID=233/ID=20862/SID=262603254/productdetails.html

http://www.playtech.co.nz/afawcs0139235/CATID=233/ID=20304/SID=940434534/productdetails.html#Specification

http://www.pbtech.co.nz/index.php?z=p&p=HDDWD6704&qr=priceme

http://www.nzgameshop.com/internal-hard-drives/hitachi-0j22423-travelstar-7k1000-1tb-2-5-inch-hard-drive-sata-6gbs-7200rpm-32mb-buffer

Thanks

Those drives are all OK.

More cache is mostly better. More rpm is definitely better.

Also make sure you have your Windows install key. If you don't then recover it before the drive totally crashes.

Ragnor

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#1153671 14-Oct-2014 15:01

It's not worth persisting with a failing HDD.

Forget replacing with another HDD, it's 2014.. you'll be much happier with a smaller but way faster SSD than a larger and slower HDD (use an external USB drive for extra storage if needed) at the same price

eg: Samsung 250GB SSD is around $200

33coupe

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#1153978 14-Oct-2014 22:07

I think I may have bricked my laptop.

I was formatting the hard dive, and after 24 hours with 2 hours left the laptop turned off cos the power supply disconnected.

When I turn it on, the message I get is

Check cable connection!
Pxe mof exiting Intel pxe Rom.
No bootable device -insert boot disk and press any key.

Any help would be hugely appreciated

ckc

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#1153997 14-Oct-2014 22:18

33coupe: I think I may have bricked my laptop.

I was formatting the hard dive, and after 24 hours with 2 hours left the laptop turned off cos the power supply disconnected.

When I turn it on, the message I get is

Check cable connection!
Pxe mof exiting Intel pxe Rom.
No bootable device -insert boot disk and press any key.

Any help would be hugely appreciated

You're going to need Windows recovery disks.

Ragnor

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#1153998 14-Oct-2014 22:18

33coupe: I think I may have bricked my laptop.

I was formatting the hard dive, and after 24 hours with 2 hours left the laptop turned off cos the power supply disconnected.

When I turn it on, the message I get is

Check cable connection!
Pxe mof exiting Intel pxe Rom.
No bootable device -insert boot disk and press any key.

Any help would be hugely appreciated

You probably just wiped the boot sector on the disk.

Do you have Windows Install media or oem recovery disk? How were you planning to re install Windows?

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33coupe

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#1154004 14-Oct-2014 22:39

Damn, it didn't come with any disks.

I thought I read somewhere that you can download them.
Also wondered if the external hard drive had some back up on it. Or was that just files?

What have I done, I'm such an idiot!

ckc

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#1155627 15-Oct-2014 19:26

You can get the disks online. But they're expensive. Or find someone with an L650 who has them. :) alternatively, if you Jane a regular copy of windows lying around, you can use that key on the bottom of the laptop with any copy. It's a fully legit key, so.

ckc

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#1155629 15-Oct-2014 19:28

I forgot to say, the disks you need are in a recovery partition on the hard drive that's borked.

Ragnor

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#1156226 16-Oct-2014 16:45

33coupe: Damn, it didn't come with any disks.

I thought I read somewhere that you can download them.
Also wondered if the external hard drive had some back up on it. Or was that just files?

What have I done, I'm such an idiot!

What version of windows was installed? Is there a serial key sticker on the bottom? If it's a new enough machine there is probably a os license key in the uefi bios instead of a sticker on the bottom.

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