Laptop Hard drives

[tw]

Originally Posted by Beest

Is it possible to run some kind of repair utility and fix the drive, quarantine errors etc. I don't think the error it is reporting is bad sectors, but just that it is about to die.

If the laptop is from one of the better manufacturers, then it comes with comprehensive hardware diagnostics (for free). Those will report on everything in the laptop. Exist exactly for problems such as yours.

To be useful, diagnostics must execute even without Windows. So computer manufacturer diagnostics are on another partition of the disk, on a provided CD, and downloaded from the manufacturer web site.

If those diagnostics do not exist, then download diagnostics from the component manufacturer. Identify the current disk drive manufacturer. Then download his diagnostics. These can also be obtained from bootdisk.com

Nothing in software repairs hardware. Nothing. If a diagnostic reports hardware problems, then your drive is about to completely fail. Get the old data off without delay.

Another product called Spinrite can help to recover data lost but still stored on that drive. Its a temporary fix of data on that drive damaged by a 'slowly getting worse' hardware defect.

[Beest]

It's a Dell, I saw a suite of diagnostics on their support website, and I'm sure they are on the computer as well.
The message that comes up indicates an unrecoverable hardware issue and just offers the option to back up now. ( I keep a regular back up anyway). Just thought I'd check.