disk tired of being read all the time?

December 28, 2005 4:03 PM

My laptop has been everywhere and has proved to be very tough. Nonetheless, I think my hard drive may have died. Help me decipher this error message... [+]

It's a Compaq 2199, with a few Windows XP bugs but mostly workable. After the first screen, I keep getting this error: "A disk read error occured. Press Cntrl + Alt + Delete to restart." This achieves nothing but to restart the same process. It seems slightly louder than normal during this failed startup. I know that before I got the laptop a new HD was installed... other than that, I'm stumped. If this is a dead HD issue, any recommendations on cheap but working laptop HDs? Thanks in advance.

posted by moonbird to computers & internet (12 comments total)

Laptop hard drives. I recommend Seagate as they come with a five-year warranty.
posted by Rothko at 4:10 PM on December 28, 2005

My laptop's hard drive died earlier this month, and I ordered a 60G Western Digital Scorpio from www.newegg.com for $83 including 3-day shipping and a 3-year manufacturer's warranty. Service was speedy, exactly what I ordered, and I have been extremely happy with the product.
posted by sara is disenchanted at 4:49 PM on December 28, 2005

Are these fairly easy to install? I've no problem opening my home unit, but laptops seem more challenging.
posted by moonbird at 4:51 PM on December 28, 2005

Most aren't incredibly challenging. I know all three of my Dell laptops are pretty (very) modular and you should be able to find decent documentation on HP/Compaq's site to tell you how to open it up.
posted by kuperman at 5:03 PM on December 28, 2005

Here's the basic reference manual. On page 17, it indicates where the hard drive is located (number 1). If it's anything like my older Dell (and it appears to be), there is probably one or possibly two retaining screws that you remove, and then (most likely) remove the sled that holds down/in the hard drive. You should be able to disconnect the existing drive from the sled, replace yours, slide it back in, screw it back together, and call it a day.
posted by kuperman at 5:08 PM on December 28, 2005

Definitely worth trying to boot from a cd and recovering the HD - Could be some critical system stuff is corrupted, but that the rest of the drive is still usable/intact for file recovery if you do slap a new HD in the machine. You might even be able to use the manufacturer recovery disk to reinstall Windows, which does a thorough scan. I have not had to do much Windows debuggery for a while, but there are many posts about useful tools on AskMe.
posted by mzurer at 6:15 PM on December 28, 2005

Seconding both kuperman and mzurer. Try reseating the thing per kuperman's instructions--maybe you'll be lucky. I've had that happen twice in the past few months on my ThinkPad.

If that doesn't work, take mzurer's advice and try to use a boot CD to recover what you can from it. I had a similar issue a few years ago. Luckily, I had configured the thing to dual-boot and while Windows was upset about the sector issue, Linux wasn't, so I was able to get my data off the thing. I was then able to re-format the drive and re-install Windows successfully.
posted by jenh at 7:11 PM on December 28, 2005

Oh wait, kuperman was giving instructions on replacing the drive with a new one...duh. Reseating it is still worth a try, though.
posted by jenh at 7:13 PM on December 28, 2005

When you order the new drive you might also throw in something like this for a few bucks that will let you convert your current HD into an external unit. If it still has enough life in it to be able to copy some files you will be able to salvage some or all documents, and having both the drives connected at once will make this easy. Besides, it's $12.
posted by Rhomboid at 7:20 PM on December 28, 2005

It might be worth trying the following suggestion found on this page:

Boot using the WinXP cd and use the recovery console (hitting R when it asks). IF and only IF you get the dos based screen AND you get something like:

1. C:\WINDOWS

Please choose which windows you want to use: 1
.... Or something like that. If you do, then type 1 and hit enter, it will ask for your administrator password which I hope you know . Then at the command prompt enter: chkdsk /r
The /r switch tells chkdsk to scan the entire drive and recover any bad sectors. Depending on the size of your drive this could take a REALLY long time. Once that is all said and done. Reboot the computer and you should not get the error. It's up for grabs how long this fix will last, so far it seems random to me.
posted by ckemp at 12:24 AM on December 29, 2005

Thanks for these recovery suggestions - I'd much rather go this way than to presume that my drive is shot. I'll try the recovery suggestions today and will post an update.
posted by moonbird at 5:51 AM on December 29, 2005

Just in case anyone is checking this...

This computer is toast... I'm pretty sure it's the HD. I tried reseating and that did nothing. Then I went into system recovery and no dice... it wouldn't let me get far and would'nt recognize the harddrive. So, I wiped everything and tried to do a full system reinstall, but again it's sputtering on the harddrive. So, looks like I'll need a new HD. Thanks everyone for trying!
posted by moonbird at 1:48 PM on January 7, 2006