It's a shame that can be said at all about hard-drives these days. When I left 
HMT they were actually cranking out decent product (monstly ZIP blanks). It 
makes me think most of the hardware manufacturers have eliminated their test 
and QC departments and re-allocated the vacant space with implements to 
increase production capacity. Numbers, its all numbers....until "YOUR" 
hard-drive dies.
    -E 
 -----Original Message-----
 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 To: [email protected]
 Sent: Mon, 21 May 2007 3:19 PM
 Subject: Re: [Eug-lug] More Laptop Woes
 
  On 5/21/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:  
 
 Opinions sought:
 
 I have a friend with a Dell laptop that's old enough to be out of 
 warranty, but not too old to be useful.
 The 20G hard drive in it failed, so I replaced it for him with a 60G
 drive a few months ago.
 Now that has failed as well, and even if I mount it in a USB enclosure,
 it still fails. So the questions are;
 Is this a pair of bad drives, or one bad controller? RMA the drive? Can
 the controller be replaced, and if so
 is it worth it? Should I just tell him to buy a Mac (because he's 
 thinking of going back to Windows)? In this instance, data recovery
 would be nice, but it's not a huge concern. 
 If it doesn't work in a known good USB enclosure, it's almost definitely two 
bad drives. Id' definitely RMA it if it's under warranty. The question then 
becomes, why did they fail? Maybe you just got unlucky, that's certainly not 
unheard of. Maybe your friend mistreats his equipment (unintentionally or not) 
and he killed them. Maybe the Dell has a design flaw and cooked the drives. 
Maybe your friend likes to use his laptop in bed or on the couch, and 
unwittingly sets it on a soft surface that blocks a cooling vent, and cooked 
the drives. 
 
 Unforutnately, without more information, it's hard to make a recommendation. 
What make / model is the newer drive? Maybe it has known problems. Personally, 
I recommend Seagate drives in most cases. They are at least as reliable as 
other makes, and every one of them carries a 5 year warranty. 
 
 Remember that with hard drives, the questions isn't "if" they will fail, it's 
"When".
 
  
  Confused in Cottage
 Grove
 
 
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 http://lillibilli.com
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 -- 
 -Regards-
 
 -Quentin Hartman-    _______________________________________________
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