The laptop that ate hard drives!
December 26, 2020 8:21 PM Subscribe
My two-year-old Dell Inspiron has had two hard drives fail. How can I make sure something about the computer isn't killing them, or fix it if it is in fact a hard drive muncher?
We bought an Inspiron 7000 for my wife a couple of years ago. Simple, only remotely fancy feature is the touchscreen, but it does what she needs - web browsing, streaming video and solitaire. Shortly after we got it, I took out the slow-ass HDD and installed an SSD. Worked fine until last winter until all of a sudden it refused to boot up. Delving into the boot menu, I discovered that the hard drive was just gone - completely invisible to the system.
After assorted attempts at recovery I gave up, dug out the HDD it came with, and plugged that back in. Worked like a charm! Until tonight, when, once again, it refused to boot, with errors consistent with a corrupted OS drive.
This time the hard drive is visible to the BIOS and if I'm insistent enough with the boot menu I can get to a BitLocker recovery prompt, but after that it tells me that Windows can't be loaded and I need to recover the OS. Using a recovery USB just takes me back to that prompt.
At this point I'm pretty much resigned to the HD being dead again (luckily all important files are backed up) but this is starting to look like a problem with the machine as a whole rather than bad luck with drives. Is there anything about the computer that could be causing them to fail, and how might I diagnose/address that?
Skill level: have built PCs from parts, comfortable opening up the laptop and doing the surgery necessary to replace the hard disk. No experience mucking around with BIOS settings but willing to learn.
We bought an Inspiron 7000 for my wife a couple of years ago. Simple, only remotely fancy feature is the touchscreen, but it does what she needs - web browsing, streaming video and solitaire. Shortly after we got it, I took out the slow-ass HDD and installed an SSD. Worked fine until last winter until all of a sudden it refused to boot up. Delving into the boot menu, I discovered that the hard drive was just gone - completely invisible to the system.
After assorted attempts at recovery I gave up, dug out the HDD it came with, and plugged that back in. Worked like a charm! Until tonight, when, once again, it refused to boot, with errors consistent with a corrupted OS drive.
This time the hard drive is visible to the BIOS and if I'm insistent enough with the boot menu I can get to a BitLocker recovery prompt, but after that it tells me that Windows can't be loaded and I need to recover the OS. Using a recovery USB just takes me back to that prompt.
At this point I'm pretty much resigned to the HD being dead again (luckily all important files are backed up) but this is starting to look like a problem with the machine as a whole rather than bad luck with drives. Is there anything about the computer that could be causing them to fail, and how might I diagnose/address that?
Skill level: have built PCs from parts, comfortable opening up the laptop and doing the surgery necessary to replace the hard disk. No experience mucking around with BIOS settings but willing to learn.
What happens when you run Smartmontools on the drive in a different system? What does it tell you about the health of the drive?
When you extract this SSD from the Inspiron, use your phone camera on zoom to examine the circuit traces around the SATA connector in case it's causing errors and bad data to be written. I think the Inspiron can be a flexy kind of laptop, so tightening all the screws will help avoid loose connectors or flexing/breaking circuit boards.
posted by k3ninho at 3:29 AM on December 27, 2020
When you extract this SSD from the Inspiron, use your phone camera on zoom to examine the circuit traces around the SATA connector in case it's causing errors and bad data to be written. I think the Inspiron can be a flexy kind of laptop, so tightening all the screws will help avoid loose connectors or flexing/breaking circuit boards.
posted by k3ninho at 3:29 AM on December 27, 2020
What make and model was the SSD that died?
posted by flabdablet at 3:56 AM on December 27, 2020
posted by flabdablet at 3:56 AM on December 27, 2020
Based on your question, I'm assuming this is a SATA drive bay rather than an NVME/M.2.
So first I'd get a SATA/USB cable, mount the drive on a different machine, and fsck/chkdisk the SSD. If it's working electrically it should be mountable like a normal drive, and if that works but the file system is corrupted, that starts to point toward a software/OS problem. Either way, there could be a basic mechanical fix: those little ribbon SATA cables often go bad or get partially disconnected in laptops, and are often replaceable. If the drive isn't corrupted that's the first thing I'd consider. Slightly tightening any loose screws you can reach is also good advice.
Knock on wood I've literally never had an SSD fail, although I'm assured it happens. Both drives failing *could* be just bad luck, but I've dealt with a similar problem on both a 2013 MBPro and a random Toshiba, and both times a bad cable was the culprit.
posted by aspersioncast at 6:35 AM on December 27, 2020
So first I'd get a SATA/USB cable, mount the drive on a different machine, and fsck/chkdisk the SSD. If it's working electrically it should be mountable like a normal drive, and if that works but the file system is corrupted, that starts to point toward a software/OS problem. Either way, there could be a basic mechanical fix: those little ribbon SATA cables often go bad or get partially disconnected in laptops, and are often replaceable. If the drive isn't corrupted that's the first thing I'd consider. Slightly tightening any loose screws you can reach is also good advice.
Knock on wood I've literally never had an SSD fail, although I'm assured it happens. Both drives failing *could* be just bad luck, but I've dealt with a similar problem on both a 2013 MBPro and a random Toshiba, and both times a bad cable was the culprit.
posted by aspersioncast at 6:35 AM on December 27, 2020
As others have suggested, try mounting the SSD and HDD on an external system as an external drive and run diagnostics on it.
It doesn't sound like a mechanical failure, but perhaps the bios / drivers in this Inspiron might be corrupting the bootloader or portions of the disk.
Can you create a windows 10 installer on USB and see if it can recognize the drive, or run repair utilities on the disk to recover the partition? If it does come back, try to navigate the Dell website to find the most up to date drivers to try and insure this does not happen again.
If you are not storing critical information, I would suggest turning off bitlocker and all other encryptions, as they might be exacerbating the problem.
posted by nickggully at 7:07 AM on December 27, 2020
It doesn't sound like a mechanical failure, but perhaps the bios / drivers in this Inspiron might be corrupting the bootloader or portions of the disk.
Can you create a windows 10 installer on USB and see if it can recognize the drive, or run repair utilities on the disk to recover the partition? If it does come back, try to navigate the Dell website to find the most up to date drivers to try and insure this does not happen again.
If you are not storing critical information, I would suggest turning off bitlocker and all other encryptions, as they might be exacerbating the problem.
posted by nickggully at 7:07 AM on December 27, 2020
Does the laptop run hot. I have had laptops that ran hot, to the point that the underside of the desk would feel warm. the hard drive would eventually fail on them. I purchased a cooling pad with a fan to set the laptop on and this seems to have help the situation.
posted by tman99 at 7:54 AM on December 27, 2020
posted by tman99 at 7:54 AM on December 27, 2020
Response by poster: I haven't been able to plug the dead HD into anything because I lent my dock to a friend who is now in England through mid-January. I ordered a barebones SATA/USB converter cable last night but it won't be here for a few days. Whee!
The SSD that failed last year was a Samsung 860 EVO model, 500GB.
The one that died yesterday was a Seagate ST2000LM007 spinning-disk HDD with 2TB capacity and 5.4K RPM.
When I do open up the laptop to extract the corrupted disk I'll make sure to double-check the internal cables and look closely at the connector. It would make a depressing amount of sense if I did manage to loosen something when I first swapped the SSD in.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:39 AM on December 27, 2020
The SSD that failed last year was a Samsung 860 EVO model, 500GB.
The one that died yesterday was a Seagate ST2000LM007 spinning-disk HDD with 2TB capacity and 5.4K RPM.
When I do open up the laptop to extract the corrupted disk I'll make sure to double-check the internal cables and look closely at the connector. It would make a depressing amount of sense if I did manage to loosen something when I first swapped the SSD in.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 9:39 AM on December 27, 2020
Response by poster: Okay, so. Update.
I got my new converter, plugged the old SSD into it, and then opened up the laptop, took out the Seagate and plugged that in.
Both of them are, to all appearances, fine. I can poke around in their file structures. There are Windows directories. They pass chkdsk. The Seagate has BitLocker enabled, which I thought I turned off (had to turn off encryption in order to clone it to the SSD back when I bought that, since the SSD has less space) but once I enter that code to enable access it's not showing anything weird. winload.efi and winload.exe are present and accounted for.
I'm so confused.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 3:03 PM on December 29, 2020
I got my new converter, plugged the old SSD into it, and then opened up the laptop, took out the Seagate and plugged that in.
Both of them are, to all appearances, fine. I can poke around in their file structures. There are Windows directories. They pass chkdsk. The Seagate has BitLocker enabled, which I thought I turned off (had to turn off encryption in order to clone it to the SSD back when I bought that, since the SSD has less space) but once I enter that code to enable access it's not showing anything weird. winload.efi and winload.exe are present and accounted for.
I'm so confused.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 3:03 PM on December 29, 2020
Both drives being OK definitely points to connector issues inside the laptop being the root of the failures.
posted by flabdablet at 4:04 AM on December 30, 2020
posted by flabdablet at 4:04 AM on December 30, 2020
Since both drives appear fine, maybe a BIOS update that's doing something weird that needs an update to correct. Which exact model is it, and I'll see if I can scare up the update you can do from a USB drive you can plug in.
posted by deezil at 9:19 AM on December 30, 2020
posted by deezil at 9:19 AM on December 30, 2020
Response by poster: It's an Inspiron 7773.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 7:17 PM on December 30, 2020
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 7:17 PM on December 30, 2020
Response by poster: Update: Problem diagnosed and fixed! The cable connecting the hard drive bay to the motherboard had come loose from the SATA connector, resulting in a bad-to-unusable connection. Pushing the cable in and carefully reattaching it to the drive did the job for the moment, and if it comes loose again I'll get a replacement.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:39 AM on January 3, 2021
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 10:39 AM on January 3, 2021
I recommend replacing it ASAP. Those things are not supposed to be pulled out of the backs of their connectors, and once they have been, they're really unlikely to be reliable ever again. Next time it fails it might well do so in a way that damages data on its way out.
posted by flabdablet at 10:55 AM on January 3, 2021
posted by flabdablet at 10:55 AM on January 3, 2021
This thread is closed to new comments.
Of about 10 SDDs in use around here, only one has failed and it did so in exactly the same way as yours; it's quite common for SDD failures, if they happen, to occur like that. So most probable a failure in the drive itself, not the laptop. It's not impossible that writing corrupted data had caused that, but it's very unlikely.
The HDD corruption, as said, may have been caused by an interface speed incompatibility between controller and drive, but SATA is supposed to negotiate that. The more likely cause IME is the OS getting its knickers in a twist and scribbling data over parts of the disk that should be kept unscribbled as they contain stuff essential to booting. So, bad luck, basically.
posted by Stoneshop at 2:32 AM on December 27, 2020