[SOLVED] Is my Hard Disk dying?

[icarus2712]

Hi All,

on my old dell studio 1555 laptop , when I ran dell online diagnostic test it shows HARD DRIVE FAILURE.

Crystal Disk shows caution/50 degree centi/c5/current pending sector count 200.
Hard Disk sentinel says 100% performance and 98% health. Estimated remaining more than 1000 days.
"There are 3 weak sectors found on the disk surface. They may be remapped any time in the later use of the disk."
Running scandisk /sfw , found bad sectors and windows has repaired. CHKDSK no error.

This is so confusing as I am trying to find out what is causing my laptop to shut down in middle. No BSOD, no reboots, sudden shut down .

PS: Could it be a power brick? Because when I plug it in and use my laptop( with or without battery in) it shuts off within 10 minutes. Now again that doesn't happens when I boot into BIOS and let it idle.
On battery power without adapter I have not observed any shut down so far, as I am posting the thread.

 

[mitch074]

Hi All,

on my old dell studio 1555 laptop , when I ran dell online diagnostic test it shows HARD DRIVE FAILURE.

Crystal Disk shows caution/50 degree centi/c5/current pending sector count 200.
Hard Disk sentinel says 100% performance and 98% health. Estimated remaining more than 1000 days.
"There are 3 weak sectors found on the disk surface. They may be remapped any time in the later use of the disk."
Running scandisk /sfw , found bad sectors and windows has repaired. CHKDSK no error.

This is so confusing as I am trying to find out what is causing my laptop to shut down in middle. No BSOD, no reboots, sudden shut down .

PS: Could it be a power brick? Because when I plug it in and use my laptop( with or without battery in) it shuts off within 10 minutes. Now again that doesn't happens when I boot into BIOS and let it idle.
On battery power without adapter I have not observed any shut down so far, as I am posting the thread.

Your laptop has several problems, two of which are a dying HDD (as soon as it shows weakness, REPLACE THE HDD is one of the rules I've adhered for the last 25 years), the second is probably a cooked cooling system.
You could try checking all the capacitors for a faulty one, but more than likely taking the cooler apart, removing old thermal pads and thermal grease and replacing it all with brand new paste (and pads if there really is no way to make contact between the component and the cooler otherwise) should solve it.
It did work for me on the half dozen laptops I salvaged that way. Replacing the HDD with a SSD and adding some RAM, in some cases replacing a dead battery would turn an old turd into a perfectly serviceable browsing/light productivity laptop for less than 100-150 bucks.

 

[icarus2712]

Well the previous owner did mention that he once replaced IC which was causing overheating and shutdown. Not sure it's faulted again.

Though, should not HARDISK sentinel point out to impending HDD failure? And that's not the cause of shutdown right? Which happens every 10 minutes apart.

Yeah it's a decade old hardware, still runs great -save for this issue- Win 10 runs surprisingly fast. Bought it for about 150 bucks , I am not into gaming or video editing. Just browsing and office apps.

 

[mitch074]

Well the previous owner did mention that he once replaced IC which was causing overheating and shutdown. Not sure it's faulted again.

Though, should not HARDISK sentinel point out to impending HDD failure? And that's not the cause of shutdown right? Which happens every 10 minutes apart.

Yeah it's a decade old hardware, still runs great -save for this issue- Win 10 runs surprisingly fast. Bought it for about 150 bucks , I am not into gaming or video editing. Just browsing and office apps.

You can consider that a laptop (or any other PC, as it is) would need a refresh for its thermal paste once every 5 years, more or less, as it's the time it takes for most thermal pastes to dry out and thus lose their heat conductivity. As such a thorough cleaning and fresh paste can turn a overheating, always-crashing oldie into a perfectly fine, silent secondary machine - especially if the last cooling "fix" job was botched.
Which does happen, my father-in-law's laptop was submitted to such treatment by a street corner shop that applied a glob of low quality thermal paste without cleaning the thing first; it kept crashing after 20 minutes of mild browsing with fans blasting at full speed. One cleanup later - I actually removed EVERYTHING, including the thermal pads, because the mechanical tolerances for the cooler were such that I could actually just use paste and be done with it : removing a couple washers and carefully tightening the screws applied just enough pressure. After that, it was whisper quiet and never crashed once.
And no, HDD failure is usually reported by its internal S.M.A.R.T. hardware-level self-diagnostics, that never run without being asked to - and will not always detect an error anyway (if it does it's automatic RMA if the drive is still under warranty). Bad sectors appearing are a sure indication that the drive is dying, which, after 10 years of use, is completely normal. Software like disk scanners can "fix" a drive at the logical level, but a real fix is, at best, a low-level zeroing of the drive and tinkering with its power settings to lower its noise level and thus reduce wear at the price of longer access times. It was worth it a decade ago, not so much today where you can get a 250 Gb SSD for 30 bucks.
If your laptop still works, upping its RAM to 8 Gb and using a cheap SATA SSD is a sure way to keep it nimble for a couple years still.

 

[icarus2712]

You can consider that a laptop (or any other PC, as it is) would need a refresh for its thermal paste once every 5 years, more or less, as it's the time it takes for most thermal pastes to dry out and thus lose their heat conductivity. As such a thorough cleaning and fresh paste can turn a overheating, always-crashing oldie into a perfectly fine, silent secondary machine - especially if the last cooling "fix" job was botched.
Which does happen, my father-in-law's laptop was submitted to such treatment by a street corner shop that applied a glob of low quality thermal paste without cleaning the thing first; it kept crashing after 20 minutes of mild browsing with fans blasting at full speed. One cleanup later - I actually removed EVERYTHING, including the thermal pads, because the mechanical tolerances for the cooler were such that I could actually just use paste and be done with it : removing a couple washers and carefully tightening the screws applied just enough pressure. After that, it was whisper quiet and never crashed once.
And no, HDD failure is usually reported by its internal S.M.A.R.T. hardware-level self-diagnostics, that never run without being asked to - and will not always detect an error anyway (if it does it's automatic RMA if the drive is still under warranty). Bad sectors appearing are a sure indication that the drive is dying, which, after 10 years of use, is completely normal. Software like disk scanners can "fix" a drive at the logical level, but a real fix is, at best, a low-level zeroing of the drive and tinkering with its power settings to lower its noise level and thus reduce wear at the price of longer access times. It was worth it a decade ago, not so much today where you can get a 250 Gb SSD for 30 bucks.
If your laptop still works, upping its RAM to 8 Gb and using a cheap SATA SSD is a sure way to keep it nimble for a couple years still.

Thanks much.

 

[N3wb13g]

Thanks much.

Don't forget to "Mark as the best answer" for mitch074's answer if it helped you.

 

[icarus2712]

I installed NZXT and noticed

https://imgur.com/qlvICAD

View: https://imgur.com/qlvICAD


Is the fan even running

 

[N3wb13g]

I installed NZXT and noticed

https://imgur.com/qlvICAD

View: https://imgur.com/qlvICAD


Is the fan even running

Don't worry, as long as you can hear your fan running it's fine. Some old sensor could fail too. Like my m/b on my old PC, fan reading is n/a but the fan is running.

 

[icarus2712]

I spoke to the service shop person who had changed the IC he says the shutdown when adaptor connected, could be because of 90 W power adaptor currently using, which the seller bought later replacing the default, instead of 65 W which came with laptop. Though there is no charging issues. Battery gets charged fully. Adaptor gets hot though while charging.

Could be?

 

[mitch074]

No,

I spoke to the service shop person who had changed the IC he says the shutdown when adaptor connected, could be because of 90 W power adaptor currently using, which the seller bought later replacing the default, instead of 65 W which came with laptop. Though there is no charging issues. Battery gets charged fully. Adaptor gets hot though while charging.

Could be?

Extremely unlikely. And since it's a higher-rated power brick, it may waste some power (efficiency varies depending on power draw) causing it to heat up a bit.
As for the sensor, it may either be damaged, or undetected. If you hear the fan running, the problem isn't there.
If you CAN'T hear the fan, then a good clean up is in order - it may be stuck. If it still won't run, it fried : replace the fan. This may require some tinkering, but fear not, it's a fan - 3 (4 at most) wires that are color coded, finding a replacement of the right size (don't mind the actual model : diameter, thickness and the proper amount of wires is enough) on eBay for a few bucks isn't too difficult.

 

[icarus2712]

Well , it's definitely got something to do with power adaptor. I charged laptop to full and used without power adaptor plugged in. No shutdowns.
Then I connected power adaptor. It shuts down 😢.

 

[icarus2712]

How weird it is. It doesnt shut down while reinstalling windows which I am doing right now. This is beyond me 😢