HP Laptop, Are there known issues with their Harddrives

learnerplates

Hi,
A HP laptop I have has had it's hard-drive broken for a second time in 3 years (Don't ask me the exact model, it's about 3yrs old)
I've been told that it could be because of a design flaw, the HD is underneath the mousepad, has anyone heard of this before?
Is there some component that should be looked at? in a previous post a HD adaptor was mentioned as a suspect (I've posted this thread because it's more specific).

Tom Dunne

Don't get me started.

Yeah, I've certainly had my fair share of problems with my HP Pavillion laptop hard drive. Bought in August 2004.

learnerplates

oh right, was the mousepad ever mentioned? did you have to replace any other components besides the HD?

neilled

learnerplates wrote:

Hi,
A HP laptop I have has had it's hard-drive broken for a second time in 3 years (Don't ask me the exact model, it's about 3yrs old)
I've been told that it could be because of a design flaw, the HD is underneath the mousepad, has anyone heard of this before?
Is there some component that should be looked at? in a previous post a HD adaptor was mentioned as a suspect (I've posted this thread because it's more specific).

Not that i've heard of. Find out what model of harddrive in in your lappy and see what the reliability stats are for it!

kdouglas

have a compaq presario, which became hp just after i bought it, endless problems with the hard drive, replaced the hard drive myself about a year and a half ago and it sounds like it's on it's way out now.

There was also a few times when the laptop would fail to boot because it couldnt find the hard drive, turning it of and pushing on the hard drive bay door a bit solved this problem, only happened a few times, but i put it down to the adapter attached to the hard drive being bady aligned.

learnerplates

hhhmmmm,
I've gone for the 30G replacement, not much point in going higher if it breaks again in a year!!
HD's are so cheap now, 30G for 60euro, 40 for 65 and 60 for 70. There's a shop in Galway, Computer Ace, who's doing it for me. They seem pretty good. I'd do it myself only for I hate hardware, software is your only man.

random_banter

I guess this is fairly relevant here to your question, I have a HP Pavillion ze4700 series laptop bought in Sep '04, and a few weeks back the keyboard started doing very odd things... function buttons going on and off, typing random y's etc, anyway I dropped it into a1 computers thinking it was a keyboard error, and they called me the next day saying that the hard drive was damaged beyond repair, the motherboard was badly damaged and there was nothing that could be done! They reccomended I buy a new laptop. (also offered to ecover my data for E250, which they may not actually be able to recover, ridiculous!) Of course i was a bit shocked, thinking I had lost all my data and my lovely laptop was dead!

Anyway when i picked it up and brought it home and it was still operating pretty well! Still giving random errors, it types weird stuff on its own when moved, sometime wont turn on when on battery etc. I have no doubt there is a serious problem with the motherboard, but I dont understand what happened to the hard drive!

So in response to your post, there may well be a problem with those particular hard drives, however I cant find much info relating to this on the net, and the people at a1 computers werent particularly helpful either.

BostonB

Do HP make drives? I didn't know that.

jjohnson1984

random_banter wrote:

I guess this is fairly relevant here to your question, I have a HP Pavillion ze4700 series laptop bought in Sep '04, and a few weeks back the keyboard started doing very odd things... function buttons going on and off, typing random y's etc, anyway I dropped it into a1 computers thinking it was a keyboard error, and they called me the next day saying that the hard drive was damaged beyond repair, the motherboard was badly damaged and there was nothing that could be done! They reccomended I buy a new laptop. (also offered to ecover my data for E250, which they may not actually be able to recover, ridiculous!) Of course i was a bit shocked, thinking I had lost all my data and my lovely laptop was dead!

Take it somewhere else, you have been tricked to trying to part with money, a hard drive failure would not cause problems with the keyboards. Typical problems of a hard drive error would involve random freezes, files going missing, corrupt files, problems opening files and documents and that kind of thing, you have been lied to, the fact they offered to recover your data for 250 Euro makes me think that even more so, exactly why did you lose?

Again if it was a motherboard problem you are likely to see more issues than a keyboard problem, but it for sure is possible the motherboard connector for the keyboard may be damaged, the motherboard controls everything, and a slightly damaged motherboard in a lot of cases will prevent the PC from even booting properly or if it does prone to lots of crashes and errors.

I would say you should take it to someone else and get a second opinion.

jimmycrackcorm

HP don't make hard drives. What I notice about the older HP laptops is that they generate huge amounts of heat which is a killer for drives. Laptop drives in particular aren't going to be as reliable as pc drives due to design and knocking about more. This isn't just a HP problem except for excessive heat.