Dead Hard-disk on XPS

  • Thread starter Thread starter Raz
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Raz

Raz

Raz

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Hello all

A few days a ago my dell xps 1530 froze while browsing the net and then wouldn't restart. After running the diagnostics it seems the hdd is failing or dead (I get a 2000-0146 error and the SMART short test fails too).

I'm hoping Dell will replace the drive as I've only had it 5 months now but is there anyway of getting the data back? There's some confidential data on there, and data I liked to save - is there anyway of getting into Windows long enough to make a backup of everything (or image etc)?

thanks!

Raz

edit - uh probably in the wrong forum. But is this common on the XPS?
 
It depends completely whats on the drive. If its utterly dead, you only hope is a data recovery company, but you're talking pretty big money.

If it was me, I'd try and plug it into a working machine as a seconday drive and see if you can recover what you need that way.

Cant comment on the XPS but its going to use standard disks like any other laptop. Unless the cooling is bad and the drive is overheating, it shouldnt be any more common than other laptop drives.
 
The XPS 1530 uses a SATA drive so you should be able to try this as a second drive in most pc's. To remove it the drive compartment is on the left of the laptop under the palm rest. There are 4 screws on the bottom of the laptop to undo then the drive slides out.

Will removing the drive yourself affect the warranty?
 
Ok, thanks for the replies. I'll have to connect it to my desktop to see if I can recover any files.
 
POB said:
No, they are designed to be user replaceable.
Click to expand...

Interesting to note that from my understanding of their waranty policy you can pretty much take the machine apart (ie not just memory and HDD) and as long as the problem is not caused by you taking it apart they will still honour it.:)
 
Get yourself a copy of zero assumption recovery, it is awesome at recovering data even from failing drives or lost partitions. Used it with a failed laptop drive in a caddy just last week and managed to recover a all the users data even though windows wouldn't boot.
 
I've managed to connect the laptop hd to my desktop but can't see most of the files - it's showing 2gb free and 500mb used but there's only about 700mb of data on there!

Plus, the actual size of the partition is around 260gb so that's missing/corrupted too.

hmm...
 
just a quick update - I tried that program and it seemed to take ages getting past the initial analysis. At the next stage there were a whole load of bad sectors and after about 6% the program just crashed. Guess it's dead then.
 
Mmmm, run a disk check on it?

I also have to add here (slightly off topic) that Dell's support for their XPS line is amazing, I just had the motherboard in a clients machine replaced free of charge, at home something like eleven months out of warranty.
 
I think your only option now is to pay a professional data recovery company, but that doesnt come cheap.
You could try getting dell to pay for it, but you'd probably be lucky!
 
thanks for the replies.

Dell want me to format it and re-install Windows. I'm getting another harddrive for the laptop and I'm going to install windows on that. I'll have Dell replace their drive and use it as a backup
 
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