HDD failure or soemthing else?

R

RebeccaOwen

New Member
I have a Toshiba Satellite A665-S6094 laptop and I'm having serious issues.
Here's some specs (if necessary):
Win7 Home Premium 64-bit
Intel Core i7-740QM Processor, 1.73 GHz (2.93 GHz with Turbo Boost Technology), 6MB Cache
Mobile Intel HM55 Express Chipset
NVIDIA GeForce 310M with 512MB GDDR3 discrete graphics memory
Total Available Graphics memory 2270MB
4GB DDR3 (max 8GB)
640GB (5400 RPM); Serial ATA hard disk drive
TOSHIBA Hard Drive Impact Sensor (3D sensor)

My trouble is that it won't boot into Windows consistently. And when it does, it's terribly sluggish. (10+ minutes to bootup, ridiculously slow response to programs, etc.)
I might have a failing hard drive (OR a bad motherboard - not really sure). I've done a couple "factory restores" and two separate Chkdsk's (one on the bad Toshiba laptop and the other chkdsk on a good working HP laptop). Both chkdsk's found bad clusters and made repairs, yet it still fails to get past "Boot Menu" most of the time. When it does boot to Windows, it's very very slow.

In addition to doing the "factory restores", and "chkdsk's", I've also I reseated the RAM multiple times. Tried different RAM. Took out the battery. I took out the optical drive. Took out and reseated the hard drive. I tried all of these things in different configurations and sequences and nothing has solved the bad Bootup, nor the slow response time.

So, a couple questions.
1. Other than chkdsk, is their a way to check the hard drive to see if it's failing?
2. How does one test the mobo to find problems?
 
I can almost guarantee thats its the hard drive failing. Once you start getting bad clusters, replace the drive.
 
johnb35 said:
I can almost guarantee thats its the hard drive failing. Once you start getting bad clusters, replace the drive.
Click to expand...

The drive boots totally fine (multiple times) in my HP laptop, so there goes your "guarantee".

Also, I finally found a Windows 7 disc. Been messing with the repair settings for hours. It couldn't automatically repair the issues, so I've been doing it manually in the command prompt for hours. It's having a variety of troubles (MBR - Volume does not contain a recognized file system; can't rebuild Bcd; and too many other things to type here). I'm tired of writing code.

I think it's a hardware issue, like a storage controller. No clue how to verify this though.
 
I definitely am with with johnb35. I have (and I know Johnb35 has also) seen many hard drives die, and those symptoms scream failing hard drive. You also can not "fix/repair" a failing hard drive. Once its on its way out there is absolutely nothing you, I or anyone can do to "fix/repair" them. Software fixes only mask hard drive damage by marking the mft so that nothing can use the dead areas. The problem will spread.

If you want to continue using that hard drive, nobody can stop you. But eventually it will fail. And when it fails from bad areas, everything on that hard drive will be unrecoverable. Just so you know.
 
Aastii said:
What is the manufacturer and model of your hard drive?
Click to expand...

Toshiba MK6465GSX.

I might have scrambled the MBR (or something) from F'n around in the Windows command prompt for hours, because I popped the drive (for the 3rd time) back into my good HP laptop and now it can't read it. Even with the Windows 7 disc running, and running the HP hard drive test, I'm getting this error message: "error hard disk 1 quick (303)". Perhaps the drive is toast now, but why did it boot fine (twice) in this HP laptop earlier?
Anyway, it's time to toss it in the trash. I already have two other working laptops and the data from this one was backed up before the corruption. I just wanted to see if I could fix it before I took a hammer to it. :)
 
As far as I'm concerned those toshiba drives aren't very reliable. However, when you put that drive into your HP laptop, did you boot to it or did you just slave it? The reason being is that once windows is installed on to a drive, the drive can't be moved to a different computer and be used a boot drive because of the install looking for different hardware and not finding it. So if this drive was installed originally in the HP laptop and moved to a different machine, thats why it won't boot up.
 
RebeccaOwen said:
Toshiba MK6465GSX.

I might have scrambled the MBR (or something) from F'n around in the Windows command prompt for hours, because I popped the drive (for the 3rd time) back into my good HP laptop and now it can't read it. Even with the Windows 7 disc running, and running the HP hard drive test, I'm getting this error message: "error hard disk 1 quick (303)". Perhaps the drive is toast now, but why did it boot fine (twice) in this HP laptop earlier?
Anyway, it's time to toss it in the trash. I already have two other working laptops and the data from this one was backed up before the corruption. I just wanted to see if I could fix it before I took a hammer to it. :)
Click to expand...

Take the hammer to it. Or play with the motor. I had 2 IBM Deskstars that failed on me without warning years ago. Lost everything so I took a hammer to them and then made a small fire with them. Also had a Maxtor that died on me before that, lost all my early photography and video that I used to do. 40GB worth of some of my first photographs and videos gone.

My 2 current HDDs are probably on their way out as well, seeing as they wont load an OS or even install one but seem to work fine in every other aspect.
 
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