laptop HDD keeps failing

jonny512379

jonny512379

jonny512379

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Joined
20 Apr 2011
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231
Location
Stoke on Trent
Hi All

Hoping someone can shed some light on an 'older' laptop problem my little brother keeps having.

He has an L300D Toshiba laptop.
The problem is the HDD has now failed twice (if i replace it again this will be its 3rd hard drive!).
Is this just unlucky or maybe a sata controller issue? (or something else, the error message is "missing NTLDR". I have tried a windows reinstall (on the last HDD) but again this fails as it does not recognise there is a HDD, and of course i can not get to a state where i can restore to a previous backup point)
(i have tested the last HDD in my pc and ran some diagnostic tools on it and they do indeed confirm there is a fault).
I assume i am not installing it wrong, and the bios looks to be good (set to AHCI)

The latest HDD that has failed is http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-349-WD&groupid=701&catid=14&subcat=896
which i class as a good make, and of course brought from OC

Any ideas welcome.
Im wondering if it would be better if he got a new laptop, as replacing the HDD is becoming expensive.....

Thanks
Jon
 
Replace it with an SSD, sounds like he is mistreating the laptop, a knock or jolt whilst operational will knacker a HDD, so dumping the laptop from your knee to the couch when tea is ready or something like that will cause problems.
 
Thanks for all your replies!

Although it looks like i was premature in asking "what the problem may be", as it clearly is not the problem....

when i was originally told about the problem, the description i was given was "it is doing the same as before when the HDD failed".
However when i ask, further questions later on, i get the answer "well i cant click on the icons, but i can move the cursor ok"......(which of course is not a boot failure!)

HMMMMM

Thanks for your ideas anyway :-) they may come in useful at other times and it will teach me to not listen to the customer in future!
 
Ripshod said:
Maybe just put the drive in another machine and tried booting from it?
Click to expand...

Yes, thanks, i did that with the last "faulty" HDD's, although i just installed it as a second drive and not the boot drive.
The problem seemed to be intermittent, in that sometimes the HDD was picked up by my system and other times it was not (i of course checked my wirings/tried different ones and ports) (nor was it available in disk management if it was not found by the Bios on boot).
I downloaded a test utility from the HDD manufacturer, that scanned the disk and it informed me there were unknown problems that could not be fixed (informing me to contact the manufacturer, etc)

Thanks anyway, but the problem has now changed (please see my previous post)
 
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