Harddisk failure when I use last 10 GB of it?

I've been having some trouble with my computer for a long long time!

I have a Lenovo 3000 N200, with a 100 GB Hard-disk. I've always had trouble with it. At the start I had vista installed. At some point windows wouldn't boot anymore. I thought that vista was the cause of it, so I found a XP version to use. But that also caused me trouble. At some point windows simply stops working, so I have to format my computer around every 3 months or so - which is a real pain!

At one of those formats, I decided to split my HDD in two partitions, so I didn't have to make backups of all my work. After that I've experienced fewer crashes.

I've also noticed that when my second partition gets filled up so there is only around 10 GB left, windows crashes (while I'm copying the file over). If I delete that new file again, there's no problem.

So after years of trouble, I'm finally pretty sure of what the problem is. I just have no clue if it can be fixed.

So if you have any ideas of how to fix this, please let me know! (There's no warranty on it anymore - had it for almost 4 years)

Additional info: At some point if I tried to defragment it, it would also crash.

RasmusWL

Posted 2011-03-24T19:07:03.970

Reputation: 237

Does the N200 have "Rescue & Recovery"? I'm only familiar with the business class ones. Anyway, the R&R data is stored at the physical end of the drive. I wonder if that is there, but somehow XP/Vista is not aware of it...? (long shot I know.) – skub – 2011-03-24T19:12:14.233

So what's your question? – Majenko – 2011-03-24T19:12:40.103

@ skub. Yes there is R&R on it, but I haven't been able to acces that after I installed XP. (at least I don't know how) – RasmusWL – 2011-03-24T19:19:35.993

Answers

Sounds almost as though you have a write protected area on the drive. OEM's occasionally have the drive setup so that there is a portion at the end of the drive reserved for the restore partition and data (about 10G or so.) The drive can see the area, but is prevented from writing to it. Sounds like you reformatted your drive and now it thinks this area is accessible, but when it tries - down you go. Change your partitioning - try and shrink your second partition and either exclude the last 10G or so or create a third partition but don't format or use it.

Blackbeagle

Posted 2011-03-24T19:07:03.970

Reputation: 6 424

See if there's a firmware upgrade for your hard drive. Backup your data before using it.

LawrenceC

Posted 2011-03-24T19:07:03.970

Reputation: 63 487

If you suspect hard drive problems then replace your hard drive. Or at the very least run some hardware testing tools on it.

http://www.hirensbootcd.org/download/

Majenko

Posted 2011-03-24T19:07:03.970

Reputation: 29 007

I think replacing it would be too costy, considering I've lived with it for almost 4 years now. I'll give that hardware testing tool a try! Thanks. – RasmusWL – 2011-03-24T19:22:58.847

Too costly? I just bought 3 2TB drives for my file server with loose change... (well, not exactly). A 2.5" 160GB drive can be bought for around 35 UK pounds. – Majenko – 2011-03-24T19:28:40.187

this is a laptop, so 4 yrs. is the right time to replace the disk – jet – 2011-03-24T21:11:56.197

-3

I had a problem like this with my mac osx laptop...I took it to the apple store so I hope I'm explaining what they did correctly.

On a HDD data can be spread all over the disk making it hard for the computer to know how much space is used.

I think de-fragmenting it should push all the data is one side of the HDD and organize it and solve your issue.

A Clockwork Orange

Posted 2011-03-24T19:07:03.970

Reputation: 306

The computer should always know how much space is used - how else can it read the files off the disk? – Majenko – 2011-03-24T19:15:00.617

I didn't fix it.I had a similar problem as RasmusWriedtLarsen and The guys at apple used disk utility to Repair disk and disk permissions. Maybe there is a equivalent to that on windows? – A Clockwork Orange – 2011-03-24T19:24:11.783