I got a Dell XP laptop 3 years ago.
Have firewall, virus protection, do
all updates, don't open attachment,
don't use file sharing, don't move it.
Every year, the hard drive dies with
no warning. It is gone. Twice I
replaced it. This time I'm not going
to replace the hard drive.
Why do PC laptops die so quick?
I have a 10-year old Mac laptop that
still runs fine - if I don't go to modern
web sites. Why do hard drives die
so fast on Windows laptops?
Or is my experience rare?

In news:1j7o3ca.1l8nrxc1fx22sN%mark@mail.goguys.com,
Mark Shapiro typed on Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:02:06 -0700:
> I got a Dell XP laptop 3 years ago.
> Have firewall, virus protection, do
> all updates, don't open attachment,
> don't use file sharing, don't move it.
> Every year, the hard drive dies with
> no warning. It is gone. Twice I
> replaced it. This time I'm not going
> to replace the hard drive.
> Why do PC laptops die so quick?
> I have a 10-year old Mac laptop that
> still runs fine - if I don't go to modern
> web sites. Why do hard drives die
> so fast on Windows laptops?
> Or is my experience rare?

I think your experience is somewhat rare. I have purchased 7 laptops
since '84 and only one of them had died after 5 years. But the hard
drive was still good. The other 6 are still running just like the day I
got them.

Your problems with hard drives sounds like they might be failing do to
vibrations. Mac laptops use high quality hard drives which can handle
shock far better than the average PC hard drive. Although Apple drives
weren't always like this. As the first iPods that used mechanical hard
drives were failing left and right. As they couldn't handle the shock of
being moved about.

I am pretty delicate with my hard drives, so they seem to be lasting
forever. I did have two out of 20 something drives fail (both in the
90's). And one failed being one week old and the other after 1 month. I
blame these being lemons from the get-go, so there you go. Oops! I also
received one DOA last year too. I almost forgot that one. ;-)

Since you have problems with hard drives failing. You might want to
checkout SSD (solid state drives). As they can handle huge amount of
vibrations and still keeps on working. They actually use them on the
Space Shuttle during launch. Then switch over to old mechanical hard
drives once they are free floating in space.

I love SSD technology. As you don't have to be delicate anymore. And you
can toss them on a chair, car seat, or whatever and not worry about the
shock or vibration damaging the drive. I have seven SSD I think now and
I think they are great. I did buy a used netbook with a seemed to be
defective SSD in it. I bought a new SSD and it has been working great
ever since. It seems they had a few bad batches from what I could figure
out. Later I discovered that defective one would work if you leave the
power on for about 90 minutes. So you could get your stuff off of it if
you needed too. ;-)

--
Bill
Asus EEE PC 701G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Windows XP SP2

In news:1j7o3ca.1l8nrxc1fx22sN%mark@mail.goguys.com mark@mail.goguys.com
(Mark Shapiro) wrote:

> Why do hard drives die
> so fast on Windows laptops?
> Or is my experience rare?
>

I have two IBM Thinkpads, one a 10 year old TP600E, one a 5 year old
R51, and neither has experienced any sort of failure. I'm not
particularly gentle with either.

Maybe it's your Dell, maybe it's just you.

--
Bert Hyman St. Paul, MN bert@iphouse.com

In news:hba0nj$hkt$1@news.eternal-september.org "BillW50"
<BillW50@aol.kom> wrote:

> Your problems with hard drives sounds like they might be failing do to
> vibrations. Mac laptops use high quality hard drives which can handle
> shock far better than the average PC hard drive.

I don't know what you mean by "high quality" or where a manufacturer
would go to find large quantities of "low quality" drives to put in
their laptops.

My R51 Thinkpad has the "Active Protection" system with acceleration
sensors that retract the heads on the internal drive if it's subject to
a shock.

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Active_Protection_System

--
Bert Hyman St. Paul, MN bert@iphouse.com

In news:Xns9CA6647BCA55FVeebleFetzer@216.250.184.7,
Bert Hyman typed on 16 Oct 2009 14:54:30 GMT:
> In news:hba0nj$hkt$1@news.eternal-september.org "BillW50"
> <BillW50@aol.kom> wrote:
>
>> Your problems with hard drives sounds like they might be failing do
>> to vibrations. Mac laptops use high quality hard drives which can
>> handle shock far better than the average PC hard drive.
>
> I don't know what you mean by "high quality" or where a manufacturer
> would go to find large quantities of "low quality" drives to put in
> their laptops.

Many manufactures of laptops cut cost every chance they get to stay
competitive. So most laptops often doesn't get those more expensive
anti-shock featured hard drives.

> My R51 Thinkpad has the "Active Protection" system with acceleration
> sensors that retract the heads on the internal drive if it's subject
> to a shock.
>
> http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Active_Protection_System

Yes this is nice if you don't use SSD (solid state drives). Although SSD
are far better IMHO.

--
Bill
Asus EEE PC 701G4 ~ 2GB RAM ~ 16GB-SDHC
Windows XP SP2

mark@mail.goguys.com (Mark Shapiro) wrote in news:1j7o3ca.1l8nrxc1fx22sN%
mark@mail.goguys.com:

> Why do hard drives die
> so fast on Windows laptops?
> Or is my experience rare?
>
>

Must be you. There's an antique Gateway laptop laying on my bed that's
been a DivX player and wifi TV for over 10 years. The drive rarely stops
when it's booted because the movie's on there. I never lost a drive. It's
only casualty was when I was in a bad mood and the ****ed DVD burner popped
out for no reason once too often, prompting me to grab it and rip it out of
its hole...solving that popping out problem for good. All the movies are
on my wifi network drives, so I never used the stupid DVD burner, anyways.
There's another cooling hole where the DVD burner used to be, now...(c;]

The drive is the cheapest thing Gateway could get, I'm sure. It works
fine, boots WinXPSP3 up from hibernation for years.....

Maybe if we quadrupled the Win laptop's price to match the Macbook it would
fix it.....yecch.

--
Larry

"BillW50" <BillW50@aol.kom> wrote in news:hba0nj$hkt$1@news.eternal-
september.org:

> Since you have problems with hard drives failing. You might want to
> checkout

.....the power supply output voltages.....

Just a thought....


--
Larry

"BillW50" <BillW50@aol.kom> wrote in news:hba2g9$2ls$1@news.eternal-
september.org:

> Many manufactures of laptops cut cost every chance they get to stay
> competitive. So most laptops often doesn't get those more expensive
> anti-shock featured hard drives.
>
>

It is interesting to note my Samsung NC-10 netbook's hard drive is fully
protected with this neat feature for $329 net price. I'm fairly sure it's
a Samsung drive, but not positive. Everything inside it says Samsung on
it. You can't feel and can hardly hear the drive running with your ear to
it, unlike the vibrating monsters in my Gateways. You can hear the heads
"click" to park if you tap it and energize the sensor, which goes right
back to reading again in a fraction of a second so fast the movie buffer
doesn't run dry and balk.



--
Larry

I forgot to mention, the original drive from dell died in
a year. I put in an IBM drive, it failed in a year.
Then I put in a Hitachi (maybe the same), and it
failed in a year. The failures are total, Spinrite
and the Bios says no drive - but Spinright verifies
no bad blocks.


Bert Hyman <bert@iphouse.com> wrote:

> In news:hba0nj$hkt$1@news.eternal-september.org "BillW50"
> <BillW50@aol.kom> wrote:
>
> > Your problems with hard drives sounds like they might be failing do to
> > vibrations. Mac laptops use high quality hard drives which can handle
> > shock far better than the average PC hard drive.
>
> I don't know what you mean by "high quality" or where a manufacturer
> would go to find large quantities of "low quality" drives to put in
> their laptops.
>
> My R51 Thinkpad has the "Active Protection" system with acceleration
> sensors that retract the heads on the internal drive if it's subject to
> a shock.
>
> http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Active_Protection_System


--
Shameless plugs:
http://www.JudgmentBuy.com
http://www.TheTruthAboutHemp.com

On 10/16/2009 9:02 AM, Mark Shapiro wrote:
> I got a Dell XP laptop 3 years ago.
> Have firewall, virus protection, do
> all updates, don't open attachment,
> don't use file sharing, don't move it.
> Every year, the hard drive dies with
> no warning. It is gone. Twice I
> replaced it. This time I'm not going
> to replace the hard drive.
> Why do PC laptops die so quick?
> I have a 10-year old Mac laptop that
> still runs fine - if I don't go to modern
> web sites. Why do hard drives die
> so fast on Windows laptops?
> Or is my experience rare?

I think its luck of the draw. I have a Compaq Presario R3000 that I
ran over with my car (accidentally) and the only thing I've ever had to
do to it is replace the LCD screen (because of the car) and buy a new
battery, because of age. Still works great, and I find it more
responsive than my newer HP DV6000. Although its much heavier. :)

I might not go as far as "rare" but would probably agree to "atypical".
Laptop hard drives certainly fail more often than desktop hard drives,
but desktop drives are not subject to being moved around while the
drives are operating.

Mark Shapiro wrote:
> I got a Dell XP laptop 3 years ago.
> Have firewall, virus protection, do
> all updates, don't open attachment,
> don't use file sharing, don't move it.
> Every year, the hard drive dies with
> no warning. It is gone. Twice I
> replaced it. This time I'm not going
> to replace the hard drive.
> Why do PC laptops die so quick?
> I have a 10-year old Mac laptop that
> still runs fine - if I don't go to modern
> web sites. Why do hard drives die
> so fast on Windows laptops?
> Or is my experience rare?

Give me a break. Re: "Mac laptops use high quality hard drives which
can handle shock far better than the average PC hard drive"

That is just BS.

Mac laptops use the same drives ... made by Hitachi, Seagate, WD and
Fujitsu ... as PC laptops. They are no different, overall.


BillW50 wrote:
>
> Your problems with hard drives sounds like they might be failing do to
> vibrations. Mac laptops use high quality hard drives which can handle
> shock far better than the average PC hard drive. Although Apple drives
> weren't always like this. As the first iPods that used mechanical hard
> drives were failing left and right. As they couldn't handle the shock of
> being moved about.
>
> I am pretty delicate with my hard drives, so they seem to be lasting
> forever. I did have two out of 20 something drives fail (both in the
> 90's). And one failed being one week old and the other after 1 month. I
> blame these being lemons from the get-go, so there you go. Oops! I also
> received one DOA last year too. I almost forgot that one. ;-)
>
> Since you have problems with hard drives failing. You might want to
> checkout SSD (solid state drives). As they can handle huge amount of
> vibrations and still keeps on working. They actually use them on the
> Space Shuttle during launch. Then switch over to old mechanical hard
> drives once they are free floating in space.
>
> I love SSD technology. As you don't have to be delicate anymore. And you
> can toss them on a chair, car seat, or whatever and not worry about the
> shock or vibration damaging the drive. I have seven SSD I think now and
> I think they are great. I did buy a used netbook with a seemed to be
> defective SSD in it. I bought a new SSD and it has been working great
> ever since. It seems they had a few bad batches from what I could figure
> out. Later I discovered that defective one would work if you leave the
> power on for about 90 minutes. So you could get your stuff off of it if
> you needed too. ;-)
>

Let's understand what voltage we are talking about.

Both the battery and the AC adapter are simply INPUTS to a switching
power supply inside the laptop that acts like the power supply of a
desktop PC and supplies the various voltages that the laptop needs
(typically 3.3, 5.0 and maybe 12 volts). The hard drive runs off of that.

So when you say "the power supply output voltages", the power supply in
question is the INTERNAL power supply of the laptop (typically on and
part of the motherboard) and, in particular, is ***NOT*** the "AC
adapter", which, I have a strong suspicion, is what you were thinking.


Larry wrote:
> "BillW50" <BillW50@aol.kom> wrote in news:hba0nj$hkt$1@news.eternal-
> september.org:
>
>> Since you have problems with hard drives failing. You might want to
>> checkout
>
> ....the power supply output voltages.....
>
> Just a thought....
>
>

Barry Watzman <WatzmanNOSPAM@neo.rr.com> wrote in news:hbb4av$po7$2
@news.eternal-september.org:

> I have a strong suspicion, is what you were thinking.
>

That's what I'm thinking....

output of the switcher has ONE monitored winding and TWO not monitored.
One of them could be noiser than hell or way over/under voltage from a bad
rectifier or filter cap....sending the drive into hysterics....

Worth checking that drive's pinout voltages and noise....

--
Larry

Somewhere on teh intarwebs Larry wrote:
> mark@mail.goguys.com (Mark Shapiro) wrote in
> news:1j7o3ca.1l8nrxc1fx22sN% mark@mail.goguys.com:
>
>> Why do hard drives die
>> so fast on Windows laptops?
>> Or is my experience rare?
>>
>>
>
> Must be you. There's an antique Gateway laptop laying on my bed
> that's been a DivX player and wifi TV for over 10 years. The drive
> rarely stops when it's booted because the movie's on there. I never
> lost a drive. It's only casualty was when I was in a bad mood and
> the ****ed DVD burner popped out for no reason once too often,
> prompting me to grab it and rip it out of its hole...solving that
> popping out problem for good.

[snip]

Note to self; If Larry visits slip some Valium into his coffee.....
--
Shaun.

"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's
warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchet, 'Jingo'.