Hard Dive Failures?

[Kirk1]

I have an HP Pavilion P6716f desk computer with a 1 TB hard drive running 64 bit Win 7. A month ago the computer would not boot up. When I went to diagnostics (F9) during startup, I got an error message to the effect that "no active partition was found". The HP agent whom I contacted via email concluded that this was a hard drive failure and HP sent me a new one which I installed. I had made a set recovery discs for this computer and HP also sent me a new set. I had to go through the process of restoring the computer to the "out of the box" condition, reloading all my software, ect., ect.

This morning when I tried to turn on the computer it again would not boot. This time I contacted HP support through online "chat" and the agent again concluded that this was a hard drive failure. However, this time the computer is not really responding at all. When I turn it on the opening "spash" screen comes on (in the case of this computer that screen is a hand tossing some stuff across the screen). Also displayed are the startup options - F9 for Diagnostics, it is either F10 or F11 for Restore, etc. When I hit those F keys, nothing happens. I cannot get into diagnostics or anything else. I am just curious if it likely that a hard drive failure would prevent being able to get into diagnostics or the other options which I would think would be controlled by the the system BIOS. Does anyone have any ideas on this?

[MaDef]

This morning when I tried to turn on the computer it again would not boot. This time I contacted HP support through online "chat" and the agent again concluded that this was a hard drive failure. However, this time the computer is not really responding at all. When I turn it on the opening "spash" screen comes on (in the case of this computer that screen is a hand tossing some stuff across the screen). Also displayed are the startup options - F9 for Diagnostics, it is either F10 or F11 for Restore, etc. When I hit those F keys, nothing happens. I cannot get into diagnostics or anything else.

Since the system doesn't have ps2 ports for mouse/keyboard, I would assume that the "USB Legacy support" option would be enabled by default (this is a setting in the bios allowing the system to recognize usb keyboards/mice before usb drivers are installed during windows startup).

I am just curious if it likely that a hard drive failure would prevent being able to get into diagnostics or the other options which I would think would be controlled by the the system BIOS. Does anyone have any ideas on this?

Yes, if the diagnostic/restore programs are on the drive that your having problems with, you won't be able to access them.

I wonder if the problem is actually the drive, while drives can and do fail, Having a new one fail so quickly makes me suspect either motherboard or power supply issues. (foxconn isn't exactly a top of the line mainboard, and a 250w no name psu doesn't inspire confidence). Proprietary systems are renowned for using the lowest bidder for their parts

I've seen this problem manifest itself because of a bad PSU. If it's weak or failing data becomes corrupted as it's written/read to and from the drive.

The Hp spec sheets doesn't specify the make of hard drive, but since you know it, go up to the drive makers support site and download their drive diagnostic utilities. Get the bootable ISO so you can burn it to cd/dvd. (you'll obviously have to do this from another pc). Then boot using the cd and run the drive makers diagnostic on it.

[Kirk1]

Thanks. The drive is a 1 TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.12. Seagate does have a diagnostic tool but it has to be installed on the computer. I did not see any utilities on their website to burn a bootable disc to be used for running the diagnostics. I will probably just let HP send me a new drive and see if that resolves the problem.

[MaDef]

Actuallly they have SeaTools for DOS, which is put on a cd/dvd and is bootable, which allows you to run the diagnostics on the drive regardless of the OS and whether the drive is partitioned/formatted or not.

[Kirk1]

Thanks. i did kind of wonder if that was what the DOS version was. I dowloaded, burned and ran it. I worked real nice. The result was No Hard Drives Found. I have checked the cables and the junpers could not have changed themselves so it looks like the drive is dead. I do use a 3500 joule surge protector but a surge jolt is still possible I suppose. Last time I changed drives, I installed the old drive as a second drive (this computer has a drive "cage" that makes it real easy) so I could remove and wipe stuff that I would not want to send to anyone else. Hope I will be able to do that again. Thanks again.