Is this a bad HDD?

[JJNess]

I've got a Gateway MP8708 laptop, dual-booting Vista Home Premium and Ubuntu 7.10. 160gb SATA drive partitioned: 1 for XP install, 1 for Ubuntu, and the rest as an NTFS partition for media to be accessed by either OS. Standard stuff for a techie.

Both Operating Systems are up-to-date (well, except I don't have 8.04 Ubuntu yet...) and virus-protected.

But here's the problem I have. If I listen to .mp3 files (mostly from this third Media partition, but some on each of the OS hard drives) (Not too sure about video files, as I don't have those on this hard drive) in either OS, a great deal of time the music skips, not like a scratched CD, but there's moments of silence that last up to a second before the song continues to play from the point it was last heard. It will do this a while, and then just freeze up and stop playing altogether. At this point, here are the symptoms of each OS:

Vista: Windows Media Player becomes nonresponsive (Not Responding in the title bar of the WMP program), the entire desktop doesn't work, and it requires a forced shutdown.

Ubuntu: Amarok (or VLC) becomes nonresponsive, and eventually closes. The desktop is responsive, but nothing opens but the menus, and the shutdown menu always fails (mentions some sort of read error, sorry, not that familiar with Ubuntu errors yet!).

In both OS: the hard drive activity indicator no longer lights up, and there's no audible hard drive activity. I must reboot the computer at this point by holding the power button for 5 seconds.

It's this last symptom that lends me to believe I have a bad hard drive.

More info: Running drive fitness tests typically find (and supposedly fix) errors.

Browsing the net (Firefox w/ NoScript on either OS) and streaming media always works without glitch.

Viewing media files from my external hard drive also works just fine.

Here's one confusing part: When I take this laptop to work (as it is sitting next to me) and have it on all day playing various music files (as it has been these past two days), I experience no problem. However, whenever I go home, I can't seem to get it to work without the above symptoms. I can't think of anything different about the environment that might be causing problems... both are relatively the same temperature, there might be a slight humidity difference as the office is climate-controlled, my home has open windows, the laptop sits flat on a desk in both places, with plenty of ventilation room underneath it, both places have power strips that the laptop plugs into (I rarely run on battery power alone).

Well, there you go and there you have it. I have a laptop that works perfectly fine, except for playback of media. I hope someone can help me troubleshoot this before wasting money I don't have on a new HDD!

[leroys1000]

If it works fine at one location and not the other,
it probably is not the hard drive.
The errors are probably being caused by having to reset
the computer and not shutting down properly.
Are you connecting to different hardware that may be conflicting?
You might want to check for voltage fluctuations at the wall socket.

[liondad]

Quote,
Both Operating Systems are up-to-date (well, except I don't have 8.04 Ubuntu yet...) and virus-protected

Just a guess,

Are you connected to the adsl at home,
and not at work,
And some program runs, when you are link to your home adsl
When you are at home
Ctrl/Alt/Delete, [winxp]
and open the task manager,
and click on the the performance tab,
when you are running your media programs,
at home
See if the system running at max load,
this is a sign your pc has a virus,
or something in that line,
when you use the your media players,

[JJNess]

No performance spikes. Only internet access I have is at work, which I only download AV and OS updates, then disconnect from the wireless.

I've seen these symptoms while I have my computer running on batteries, too. Just most often it's plugged in.

I think I'm just going to order a larger HDD anyways. 160gb is too small for the media I want to hold, and I don't trust my external very much as proper backup redundancy (it's rather old and has taken a beating in it's lifetime). I'll let people know if that solves the problem, but I won't be ordering, then receiving, then installing on, the new hard drive for a while, so please keep posting suggestions in the meantime.

[JJNess]

I figured this one out! Sorry for rezzing a zombie thread, but I figured others might be interested in learning this too.

See, my Gateway MP8708 laptop is built so that the HDD is mounted right behind one of the two speakers. When listening to music at home, I typically have it as loud as it can go (I'm a metalhead who likes to bang his head, what can I say?). BUT... when I'm at work, I have headphones on. That's the difference!

You see, the speakers at full volume vibrate the case with each bass drum kick of the song I'm listening to. The Hard Drive, being right behind the speaker, gets a beating and this interrupts the disk read, causing my .mp3 playback to stutter and eventually the hard drive to become non-responsive. If I have my music playing at 3/4 volume, this problem doesn't occur!

Wow, at least I don't have to buy a new HDD (yet)! Strange, but goes to show that computers can be a tricky thing to deal with!