Windows 7 Would it be a waste of money?

[wilhelm1]

To invest in a hard drive for my 4 year old Toshiba A665 Laptop? When I try to "Rate This Computer" , it hangs up when it gets to 'Primary Hard Disk". Therefore no Performance Check. I like the laptop, keyboard and the larger screen, so is it worth saving it and what would it cost to do? Thanks

PS could I replace the hard drive or do I need a special person to do it?

 

[Trouble]

Have you performed any diagnostics on the drive?
Maybe try using the native Check Disk utility
Admin command prompt, type
chkdsk C: /R
hit enter
answer Y for yes
hit enter
type exit
reboot and let it run all five stages, it'll take a while.

As far as replacing it, I would say absolutely yes (as long as the laptop is not showing any other signs of problems).
You should be able to pick up something in the $50 buck range for 500 gigs and it looks like the replacement is relatively easy, unlike some laptops.

 

[wilhelm1]

Wow, might have lucked out, I get lost when it takes 6 or more screws, LOL Just kidding. I do not know what
you mean Admin Cmd. Are you saying the Start Search line?

 

[Trouble]

Just locate the command prompt shortcut, (in 7 as I recall, it is under accessories), right click it and choose run as administrator.
That's all there is to it. We call that an administrative command prompt, kinda short hand, which doesn't seem to always come across as being as obvious as we'd like.
If you just type cmd in the search box it should come up at the top of the list and you can right click it there as well.

 

[wilhelm1]

It did not like the chkdsk:/R ran it with a c and it did a read only and did 3 parts and nothing wrong with drive.

Once I finish running as Admin do I need to change it back? MS came back and wanted to make changes to computer.

 

[Trouble]

Did you type
chkdsk C: /R
There should have been five stages ran.
It should have prompted

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.3.9600]
(c) 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\WINDOWS\system32>chkdsk C: /R
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Cannot lock current drive.

Chkdsk cannot run because the volume is in use by another
process. Would you like to schedule this volume to be
checked the next time the system restarts? (Y/N)

To which you should have had to respond by typing a "Y"
And you should have had to reboot

 

[wilhelm1]

On my desktop now and laptop is doing its thing. Thanks

 

[Trouble]

No problem.
When it is done you can check the results in "Event Viewer"
Expand Windows Logs
Select Application
Right click it and choose "find"
Type
chkdsk
and hit enter.
Near the bottom you should see a brief summary
Pay particular attention to
number of KB in bad sectors.

 

[wilhelm1]

Okay, I tried to do what you said and the only one that I could get to show up was the one that had 3 parts not 5.
So I am running the check as we speak and thought that I needed to move the one with 5 parts into the que so
to be able to pull the next one up.

What I can tell you is thru the 4th stage everything looked good but the 5th stage " Verify Free Space" said that
15 Percent complete 4,495,711 of 106,050,339 free clusters processed. Then it just hung there until I shut it down.

Hope you can make heads or tails of what I have said?

I really want to thank You and Dave 129 for all the help you guys have given me, also I am learning much from this back and forth.

 

[Trouble]

How long did it seem to be "hung" before you decided to shut it down?
Interrupting a check disk in that manner can sometime result in disk corruption, does the machine boot OK now?

 

[wilhelm1]

How long did it seem to be "hung" before you decided to shut it down?
Interrupting a check disk in that manner can sometime result in disk corruption, does the machine boot OK now?

About 1 hour. I have had the same problem when I have tried to "Now Rating System Performance" it goes thru the first 4 checks and hangs up on the final. Goes past Processor-Memory(RAM)-Graphics-Gaming Graphics and hangs on Primary Hard Drive.

 

[Trouble]

Personally, I think I'd be backing up all my critical data on that hard drive.
It's also probably good to note that it's not always a good thing to keep an eagle eye on a disk utility like ChkDsk. It can often appear to be hung as the counter that you are watching does not always indicate information accurately.
I have no idea how large this particular drive is nor do I know how long you left the over-all process running, if you would have said 4 hours with zero indication that it was still running (including hard drive light activity), then I might have agreed that it was hung.
Another thing would be to also listen for ticks and or clicks coming from that area on the bottom of the laptop that contains the hard drive

 

[wilhelm1]

You are right, time to back up and get a new hard drive. I might even try dskchk one more time and leave it run overnight.
Thanks for your help, be back with a new computer and or a new hard drive. One more question, when I get a new
hard drive, after installing it, is there anything I need to do besides install the 3 Toshiba disks?

 

[Trouble]

besides install the 3 Toshiba disks?

by "3 toshiba disks" I'll assume that, those are the three pieces of recovery media you acquired through the manufacturer?
The short answer is, no.... there shouldn't be anything else required.
The caveat being, as long is they don't require any type of recovery partition exist on the new drive, which of course it won't.
Just going by the fact that there are three disks my guess is that you should be good to go.
But you'll likely get a few fun filled hours of catching up on Windows Updates and you'll likely want to avoid any "Hardware Updates" that might be included among them.
You should probably turn that off early on before you start Windows Updates.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2500967

 

[wilhelm1]

Yes Sir, been there done that. I have been looking at laptop hard drives and I noticed that some of them are pictured with the disk
and arm exposed. Where as mine is totally encased, do some laptops use the exposed ones and they are put into a case? My computer is working and doing all that I need. Besides boot up is like 3 minutes and there is a double line of favorites that appears at boot up. It then goes away and all is well. I have started watching some of the information on how to do this and that so that I can become as smart as you guys, yeah in a million years.

 

[Trouble]

I noticed that some of them are pictured with the disk
and arm exposed.

Those graphics that you are seeing are simply images that various vendors provide and are not a true representation of what the product actually looks like physically.
All hard drives retail and bulk oem, are completely surronded and encased for protection. In fact they are so susceptible to dust contamination that a hard drive ran without the protective shell would probably last a micro-second before being trashed by physical contaminants.

 

[Mike]

Hello. I understand that you would like to salvage the drive that you currently have and @Trouble is helping you with this with great professionalism. However, on the oft-point that you do decide to upgrade your hard drive, your system MAY be using a Mobile Intel® HM55 Express Chipset. This is good news if it is the case. It will support the latest SATA-3 drives, including solid state technology. If you are going for longevity and are satisfied with your laptop other than the hard disk issue, this may be the way to go. Assume for a moment that the issue is not your hard disk drive, but some other problem, you would likely be able to return the drive for a refund from your local computer store. When repairing or replacing physical components, it is always good to know what you actually have. Here are some details I found so that you may have an inventory for future use (hopefully not needed):

http://www.cnet.com/products/toshiba-satellite-a665-s6050/specs/

http://support.toshiba.com/support/staticContentDetail?contentId=2687192&isFromTOCLink=false

And even the methodology for swapping out the drive:

http://www.irisvista.com/tech/laptops/Toshiba-Satellite-A665-A660/laptop-disassembly-1.htm

 

[wilhelm1]

Thank you for the information. Is there a way to check if I have the Intel HM55 Express Chip Set even though the write up says it does, they may have changed it. Short of opening it up.

@Trouble Thanks just saw your post.

 

[wilhelm1]

@Mike, @Trouble Sorry for the dumb response above. I spoke to soon. The information you posted was good and I went back and re-read what you posted and it made good sense. Thanks. One other question while on the subject of HHD and SSD's. Even though I have a 500GB Disk, I noticed that I am only using about 50GB. I was thinking of going with a SSD 250GB to keep the cost down. The nice thing about the SSD, it is almost Bullet Proof and I can most likely transfer it to a new laptop. What do you thing about my idea?

 

[Trouble]

I'm currently working on a Toshiba Satellite P755-S5215. I have the hard drive out and running chkdsk /R while it is attached to my system in a USB 3.0 dock.
I'm looking at the hard drive enclosure and my concern is how the drive is held in place and considering the slightly smaller form factor of an SSD, this might be a consideration although it looks to me like it wouldn't be much of a problem.
It would most like enhance the overall performance of the laptop if you decided to go that way.
Just make sure, where ever you buy it, that they have a suitable return policy should you find that it does not work for you.