Caviar Green WD10EADS: Replacement assistance needed

WD Internal Drives Desktop & Mobile Drives
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This is my first post to this board, so if you see something I should do/say/write differenctly, please let me know.  I’ll try to make it better or worse next time.  :laughing:

I’ve been given an HP P6310f desktop, 3 years old, that wouldn’t boot up, and the owners simply wanted to get rid of it. The computer says the bootmanager is missing during bootup.  System Recovery failed. 

I’ve tracked the problem to a failed or failing hard drive.  The drive fails the WD smart test and extended test.  I found a thread about this model failing the smart test but not the extended test, and it was suggest to do the low-level format of writing zeros.  I’ve not done that yet, but will before tossing the drive.

When I was speaking with HP’s Tech Customer Service about purchasing recovery disks, the discussion got to the suspicion (at the time) the drive was faulty.  The tech said that if I wanted to the recovery disks to work, I needed to replace this with a new drive with the same specs, as regarding capacity, tracks, sectors, etc.

I’m not a tech, just a guy who enjoys messing with computers.  :smileyvery-happy:  I occasionally take old hardware, salvage the best pieces, and put together a satisfactory legal XP system to be given away by local social agencies.  Any computer is better than no computer.  :smiley:

This is the first time I’ve ever had recovery disks where I’ve been told I need to be careful about the specs of the drive.  (Only the 2nd computer I’ve had that did not come with a system cd, etc.)

So, I’d like to ask for some help in getting a drive that will not be the wrong thing.   :smiley:

  1. I’ve found new 10EADS drives online, but the suffixes are different than original.  Is that something that needs to be paid attention to?
  2. I don’t know the reliability history of these drives, have they experienced problems?  This one is only 3 years old.  :neutral_face:
  3. If reliability has been a problem, what other WD drives can I use and have the reovery disks from HP not throw a hissy fit?  :laughing:

Thanks.

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Hi well I have to say the HP tech has no idea. I have replaced many different hard drives on hp systems and never a problem, once the new drive is in boot to the restore dvd and it first will make a recovery partition and then start the install . I have put raptor drives in, also ssd drives and it makes no diffrence to the recovery media. The green drives are slower and use less power but a blue drive would be fine also like a 500 gig one. What version of windows is on the drive you may be able to restore the boot manager and get it to boot to write the recovery media.

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Hammey wrote:

Hi well I have to say the HP tech has no idea. I have replaced many different hard drives on hp systems and never a problem, once the new drive is in boot to the restore dvd and it first will make a recovery partition and then start the install . I have put raptor drives in, also ssd drives and it makes no diffrence to the recovery media. The green drives are slower and use less power but a blue drive would be fine also like a 500 gig one. What version of windows is on the drive you may be able to restore the boot manager and get it to boot to write the recovery media.

In as much as I don’t buy nor recommend HP to my friends…

My first impression of the tech’s responses was negative, it just doesn’t seem logical.  But I wouldn’t be surprised the tech’s training for this was to pass along that information.  So I’m certainly willing to entertain the idea the recommendation is, how shall I say it…  BS?   :smiley:

I wish I had a SATA drive sitting around, I’d try it out and see what happens.

Since I’m going to keep the machine simply for learing about Windows 7, I sure don’t need a 1TB drive!  My Mac has a 1TB drive, I’ve had the machine for 3 years, and only have 265 GB of data.

Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit.

The reason I have hopes of saving the drive is I installed Vista Ultimate to see what would happen, and it installed and ran fine.  That’s when I got the idea of maybe I could possibly still use the drive.  Hindsight being 20/20, I wish I’d pulled the drive out and hooked it up to my existing Win computer, to see what might be able to do with the original install.

When I did get the recovery CD’s, I pulled the drive, did some internet searching, and found out where the bootmanager is supposed to reside.  Tried copying the bootmanager from the restore partition hoping it would let me access the recovery partition.  No go.

I ran the recovery disks, and it hung.  Sat there for 9 hours and never completed the recovery.  That’s when I pulled the drive and started with the Lifeguard diagnostics.

Interestingly, when I went to run the low level format, I got  the safety message about it deleting all three partitions, yada, yada, yada.  So, I decided to run the Quick SMART test again, and this time it passed.  That has me stumped.

Since this is just going to be a learning platform for me, I don’t mind purchasing a smaller hard drive.  I just don’t want to buy something that doesn’t work in the end.  And if different sized drives would work with the recovery disks, I’d go look for a refurb’ed drive.

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Well I know they work. Like you would never get the same hard drive  and for sure not one that’s 3 years old so that would mean if the hard drive goes the pc is done lol na don’t worry about it like even a 320 gig would work make sure its a sata 2 drive. And 7200 rpm drives do make a diffrence over 5400 rpm ones the more cache also helps.

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Hammey wrote:

Well I know they work. Like you would never get the same hard drive  and for sure not one that’s 3 years old so that would mean if the hard drive goes the pc is done lol na don’t worry about it like even a 320 gig would work make sure its a sata 2 drive. And 7200 rpm drives do make a diffrence over 5400 rpm ones the more cache also helps.

UPDATE!!!  :smileyvery-happy:

Sometimes, I truly believe not having all the degrees that you get with an education in the computer area is a plus.  Because, out of ignorance, I suspect I try things techs with the education may not think of or try because of the time involved.

Since the last post…

The extened test failed with the message there were too many sector errors.  I was willing to accept the WD testing as being accurate, and the drive was beyond saving.  But, I’m always curious, always thinking…

Maybe, with a format of the drive/partition would mark the sectors bad, and then maybe the drive would work.  So…

I attached the drive to my Vista install (It’s a dual XP Pro/Vista Ultimate install) with a USB adapter and formatted the windows portion of the drive, C:\ if you will from Disk Management.  Put the drive back into the HP computer.

The recovery disks ran without a hiccup!!  And Win7 started up going through the setup steps provided by HP with no problems.  Played with various settings and such, then rebooted to see if I could get into the recovery partition.  That works too.

The recovery disks plainly state that it formats the Windows partition.  My conclusion is, it doesn’t mark bad sectors.

I’ve pulled the drive out again, and it’s now connected to Vista again.  Using Disk Management, deleted all the partitions (the first 100 mb or whatever partition doesn’t show, I didn’t take the time to use Diskpart to really strip the boot record), created a  single partition and as I type this, the partition is being formatted under Vista.

When the formatting is done, I’m going to run the extended test again.  Won’t know the whole results until tomorrow night.

If this all pans out as I hoped/wished, I’ll have a 3 year old computer running for just a lot of time, and around $25.  :smileyvery-happy:

At some point, though, I’ll probably buy a new drive, but as small in capacity as I can find, and make it the boot drive.  Then I’ll use this drive as a data only drive.

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Final report: The Vista formatting cured some problems, but it will still fail the Extended test, even after writing zeros to the entire drive. Passes the WD Smart tests, fails HP’s Smart tests. So, not going to worry about that. After seeing how long it takes Vista to format the entire drive, I’m sure the HP Recovery disks don’t format anything. It just partitions the hard drive. I say this after putting the drive into the computer, and all partitions had been removed. No way did the Recovery disks actually format anything. Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit is up and running fine. Still hate Windows, though. During the updating process, it kept telling me updates failed, but a reboot removed those problems. I am positive there are bad sectors on the drive. But not enough to trash the drive over. Also reasonably sure they are grouped fairly close together near the end of the C:\ partition. When I get the time, I’m going to look for a utility that will give me the sector numbers that are bad. Then, I’ll create a partition around those sectors, assign drive letter Z:, and then hide the partition. That way I won’t accidentally write anything to that area of the disk. Total out of pocket computer expenses to get it running… Just under $25.

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Yesterday  i used hard disk sentinel… to do that  a maxtor with many bad sectors in one of the platters, but keep in mind you re data is at risk, bad sectors is like cancer, normaly appears more and more… but my drive seems to be stable using only 174 gb of 233 available ( 250 ide hard drive)  bad sectors are detected in 180gb mark  i think is continious areas

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DavidSucesso wrote:

Yesterday  i used hard disk sentinel… to do that  a maxtor with many bad sectors in one of the platters, but keep in mind you re data is at risk, bad sectors is like cancer, normaly appears more and more… but my drive seems to be stable using only 174 gb of 233 available ( 250 ide hard drive)  bad sectors are detected in 180gb mark  i think is continious areas

I can’t remember if it was in this community or elsewhere, but I read positive comments abouit HD Sentinel and HD Tune, but they are paid for programs.  I don’t need this functionality ofen enough to buy them.  In fact, this is the first time I can remember even wanting to do it.

EaseUS Partition Master, Free Home Edition, will let me hide a partition.  But I haven’t located an open source/free program that will enumerate a list of bad or susecptible sectors.  Haven’t even started looking.   :smileyvery-happy:

Since the computer will be a Win7 learning platform for me, there’s no hurry to find something to list the bad sectors, and no way I’ll ever need the 900 GB or so that is currently C:\ drive.

I will eventually partition C:, no doubt about it.  Not counting the hidden partition.