Hard Drive Corrupted

RoseRed

Hi,

Techie help would be much appreciated! I have a 3 year old Dell Dimension E520. Never had any problems till we moved last week. PC was fine at first and then yesterday we got the blue screen of death and PC would not switch on. It gets to the windows loading screen and then goes black and hangs. We managed to get on in safe mode and copy our important data onto a memory stick.

Tried doing a repair installation of Windows XP and it failed saying the C drive was corrupted and not able to repair. I had a look inside the main body of the PC and could not see anything had obviously become loose or dislodged. I then tried to reformat the drive, it goes through the reformatting procedure and then we get more messages saying that the disk is corrupted and we get no further.

If we try and switch the computer on now the windows XP screen comes up, then it goes black and hangs there.

Any ideas? We can ill afford to replace our PC on top of everything else at the moment! Will replacing the hard drive be likely to work and how do I find one that is compatible with my computer? I'm normally capable of replacing straightforward things if I can find proper instructions on the net. Or is my computer dying a death and in need of complete replacement?

Any advice or links would be gratefully appreciated.

RoseRed

gonzo127

hm sounds a bit strange, you have been able to access your hard drive to back up your files, yet when it is trying to format or load states hard drive is currupted.

right first thing i might suggest is to try the hard drive checks, Chkdsk however if you cant run this you should be able to find some bootable cd's from your hard drive manufactorer which will check the disk for errors, i think there is also one which has a collection of utilities for different makes called ultimate boot CD or something like that

macman

Have you checked to see if your PC has an extended warranty? A lot of Dells of that era were sold with a 3 year warranty, so yours might just be inside that.
If you post the Dell service tag number (7 digits on a sticker on the case) then someone can check for you (or you can phone Dell or check it via their website).
If it's still in warranty then you'll get a new drive. You certainly don't need a new PC even if the drive has failed.
Do you have the original XP CD or a Dell recovery CD?
Have you tried accessing the Diagnostics by tapping F12 at start up-look for ''Boot to Utility Partition' or 'Diagnostics'. Then run the hard drive diagnostics.

Hammyman

Changing the hard drive is very simple. You just need to find one with the correct connectors. If it has a wide rectangular one with two rows of pins plus one with four pins then it is an IDE drive. If its got two small plugs it is SATA.

viv0147

hard drive is corrupted. maybe to much !!!!!!.

totalsolutions

Remove the drive cables and reattach and try again, "looking" is no good. Then reformat. The drive does not say it's corrupted, just fails, a simple device with no intelligence.

RoseRed

Thanks for all your help. I'll try reattaching the cables and reformatting and see what happens. I've tried running the disk checks etc but they get to a certain point and then stop.

If all else fails I'll get a new hard disk, they don't seem to be especially expensive.

No, there is no !!!!!! on my PC. I keep it on the laptop instead

Basil1234

i had a dell machine some years ago that had same fault thought was hdd changed it still isssues turned out one of the psu rails had blown! put in new psu and hey presto with old drive back in came back to life.
i would suggest trying hirens boot cd finding the hdd manufacturer diagnostic prog for your manufacturer e.g. maxtor and test hardrive first. if there is direct issue with hdd it will let you know!
get from http://rs503.rapidshare.com/files/412099653/Hirens.BootCD.11.0.zip

use free user

RoseRed

Woo hoo it is all up and running now! Went back inside and detached and reattached the hard drive. It has now completely reformatted and is working fine. We've got all the diagnostics going and that should let us know if there are any problems.

So fingers crossed I won't need a new hard drive but I will be investing in an external drive to back up my work!

Thanks so much for your help.