How do you know if your hard drive is dead?

O

onakasuita11

New Member
So I've had "imminent hard drive failure" show up on my screen for about a year and a half. I had everything important backed up.

I have an HP pavilion laptop, and yesterday it wouldn't wake up from sleep. I turned it off and now it won't turn back on. All that happens is some lights are on, and the caps and num lock keep blinking.

Has my hard drive failed? Is it time to get a new one?

I thought that if it fails, a screen shows up and says there are errors and stuff like that. And I have been searching online and that is what a lot of people have seen. So now I'm confused as what this is.

I went on the HP website and did this: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01997899&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&product=3832012 (Nothing changed)

and I also tried this http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...3366&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en&jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN (I couldn't count the number of blinks because they just keep blinking forever and all blinks are 2 sec apart)

Please give me some input. Thanks.
 
If just your hard drive failed you should still get the BIOS splash screen and usually a message saying something like "non-system disk". Since you don't see that I suspect something else failed. It seems you should be able to determine the issue by the blinking LEDs but it doesn't make sense that the LEDs blink continuously. Any chance you're not looking at the correct LEDs?
 
strollin said:
If just your hard drive failed you should still get the BIOS splash screen and usually a message saying something like "non-system disk". Since you don't see that I suspect something else failed. It seems you should be able to determine the issue by the blinking LEDs but it doesn't make sense that the LEDs blink continuously. Any chance you're not looking at the correct LEDs?
Click to expand...

Thats not necessarily true. You can still have a bad hard drive attached to a system and it won't boot up at all. I've ran across this a few times already.

To onakasuita11,

To make sure its your hard drive causing this just disconnect the drive totally(disconnect power and data cables) and try booting up. If the system acts normally by getting the bios screen and getting either the "no operating system found" or "please insert system disk" messages then you have a bad hard drive.
 
So I took the hard drive out and started my computer. The same exact thing happened. Just the blank screen with the blinking lights. I'm assuming the light just keeps blinking because it's just one blink. Which I guess means the CPU is not functional. What does this mean? Or can it be something else?
 
If the problem makes it so the computer can't boot up to a point where it has established the ability to display text on the screen, it requires a more primitive way of communicating its status, hence blinking lights and beeps.
 
I think it is either your motherboard or RAM that is faulty (but it could possibly be a power supply unit). I would think it is your motherboard or memory.

Remove the memory one module at a time and attempt to start your system.

If the motherboard is gone you will likely need to buy a new power supply, processor, motherboard, RAM, case and a new Windows installation disk. Your old processor likely isn't worth keeping.
 
onaka, did you figure out your issue? if not, try clearing the CMOS by jumping the pins leave it jumped for about 10 seconds then replace the pin where it was. (i cannot stress this enough though: MAKE SURE YOU'RE GROUNDED SO YOU DONT FLASHFRY THE MOTHERBOARD. discharge static from yourself by touching a nonpainted surface on the case, or better yet, wear a antistatic strap. then go by process of elimination: remove the power cords and the data cables out of ALL drives, then try to boot. then remove memory one by one and try to boot. if nothing, get a flashlight and look at the caps on the motherboard. they look like tiny batterys with an "x" through the top. if any of the 'X' 's are bulged out, your mobo is done. maybe check that first.

dont mean to rez a 2 day old thread, i hope he got his problem figured out

im sorry, ive been in my cups, and didnt realize until now he was discussing a laptop. my bad. sorry for drunk posting. i hope you figured out your problem though!
 
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It's pretty simple. If you have 1 hard drive in the computer then when it fails your computer will cease to operate before you get a new one.

If you have more than 1 hard drive and the failing one is only a storage drive then you will no longer have access to that drive as it will no longer work.

My question to you is why have you left a hard drive in your computer that is failing for a year and a half? You are just asking to lose data that you accidentally forget to backup.
 
So it wasn't my hard drive. It was my CPU. My friend's dad replaced it for me and my computer turns on and everything. Now there's another problem. It won't stay on for more than 10 min. We don't know if it's overheating, or what. Any ideas?
 
Yep, usually means its overheating. Did he reapply thermal paste before attaching the heatsink? Is the heatsink firmly on the cpu?
 
Yes everything with the heatsink is fine. We replaced that too, and now the fan is running really "efficiently". I don't know if that's because my old one was barely moving, we cleaned all the junk out, or if it's running super fast because it's trying to cool it down.

I've had overheating problems in the past where I would be watching a movie and my computer would get super loud and super hot and shut off. But this happened after several hours. Now it's only a few minutes.

The thing is, it doesn't feel hot to the touch at all. Any ideas of what can be done?

Could there be anything wrong with the battery or the power cord?
 
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What was the original processor that was in it? What processor is in it now? Is this a store bought pc or a custom built? Could be a few different reasons why. Give me model of pc if store bought or model of motherboard if custom built.
 
The original processor was an AMD Turion X2 dual core mobile RM-72. We actually replaced it with the same exact one. It was store bought and it's an HP Pavilion dv5z-1100
 
I'm sorry, I thought this was a desktop system. Should have read your first post again. I still say this is a heat issue somehow. May need to take back apart and redo everything, making sure everything is good to go.
 
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