Need Your Opinion

[anth]

I've been getting a boatload of laptops in recently with bad hard drives, customers complaining that they are slow freezing up, and locking up. One of the things we obviously do is run a diagnostic on the hard drive, most times the diagnostic show one or more bad blocks, we have been replacing drives with bad blocks one ore more it doesn't matter if it has a bad block we replace the drive.

Do most of you guys do this with a repair/tuneup if the hard drive diagnostics shows one more bad blocks?

 

[johnrobert]

You are doing the right think as it will only get worse,
If it is left they risk losing all there data

 

[16k_zx81]

I've been getting a boatload of laptops in recently with bad hard drives, customers complaining that they are slow freezing up, and locking up. One of the things we obviously do is run a diagnostic on the hard drive, most times the diagnostic show one or more bad blocks, we have been replacing drives with bad blocks one ore more it doesn't matter if it has a bad block we replace the drive.

Do most of you guys do this with a repair/tuneup if the hard drive diagnostics shows one more bad blocks?

Yep. I dont mess about with hard drives. If there's an issue like this my immediate recommendation to customer is to replace outright.

 

[Encrypted Existence]

Yep. I dont mess about with hard drives. If there's an issue like this my immediate recommendation to customer is to replace outright.

Same here. fillllllllllller

 

[nesrinamb]

same with me here since I dont take a chance with he drives as many of my customers tend to have financial stuff that they really need and some aren't the best at backing up their files even though I constantly try to remind them.

 

[Appleby]

Totally agree. I replace them and I've been getting alot more than normal in the last couple months?

 

[coffee]

I have also witnessed a rash of hard drive failures. To be fair its on some older drives (10 years old!) on dell dimensions. But I did get a Seagate 1TB in with a firmware issue.

People it seems hold on to these old computers and never upgrade them. Then they decide to start storing data from work on them and dont realize the implications.

I dont think its manufactuer specific. My service calls on hard drives have been across the board. Its just they are old. I tell you, If I ran a business of my computer then I would be upgrading it every 2 years!

 

[anth]

It's good to hear that I'm not alone, in my thinking of replacing the drive.
Thank you for all the replies.

 

[mic1011]

Same here; one bad block=drive replacement!

Can't mess around with it. Customers don't like it when they bring a system in for something unrelated, and you tell them they have a bad drive. That's too bad though because I will not spend hours cleaning up a system, just to find out at that point that the drive is acting strange, and have it fail a diag after wasting time working on it.

Rule 1: Test the hard drive before doing anything else to it, regardless of reason for service event.

Rule 2:If as little as one bad block shows up, inform customer that it is unwise to keep using it.

Rule 3: If you don't do this, the customer will blame you when it really goes bad in a few weeks/months. You know they will. Better to be proactive all the time than to have it do damage later which you will take blame for.