Girlfriends HP DV5000

So, got a story here and I think.. Well idk
My girlfriend has a HP Pavilion DV5000 notebook for about a year and a half. The problem is that she has gone through 3 hard drives in that time period. She does no major computer work just basic internet surfing and some torrent downloading. She has virus scan and spyware protection. She turns off the computer almost every night and I don't think its a heat issue. Im about to get into a fight with her dad about it and I am wondering if there could be any other ways that the other hardware in the computer could cause this to happen... Thank you for all your help!!!!1

Scuba

Is she in the habit of carrying it around or subjecting it to G-forces while it's running?

No, It is usually in her room.

Would you happen to know the brand of the original and replacement hard drives?

I just left her house but I could try to find out tomorrow...

srmorris2 said:

I just left her house but I could try to find out tomorrow...

Click to expand...

Where I am going with this is I wonder if they were all the same brand drive. Unless she is getting very rough with the machine, I can not see that many drives dying in that short of a time. I bought a new Compaq/HP machine over 2 years ago now and take it with me (in a good padded Laptop case) on my network service calls and it's the original Hitachi drive that came with it. Same with my iBook g4 and I take that even more places. Drive is over 2.5 years old now and never an issue.

Let us know what you find out.

I can tell you it is mostly in her house and its not like she takes it and throws it around like a frisby. Is there any way that some of the equipment inside could cause this?

If it's just sitting around most of the time, I would have to say that it is most likely some other piece of hardware that's causing the drives to short out. Possibly a poor electrical connection is leaking extra power to the drive, which would most certainly fry the drive's circuit board over time.

THat is exactly what I was thinking vut everytime they just say it was some virus that fried the hard drive...

data on the drive can't fry it.

and my wife has one of those - an old one that i bought at least four years ago, she's even dropped it hard enough to really damage the front of the shell. and she lets it run out of power constantly. that machine is still on it's first 40Gb drive.

I would say that 3 drives failing is extremely rare. It must be some other hardware issue, as Kash mentioned. I would take it to HP and get it repaired or replaced. Even if the warranty expired, the problem is pre-existing, so you could argue that they are still obligated.

So what would be some possible reasons that could cause these drives to cause problems

bad mobo - which is definitely within the realm of possibilities for hp.

bad fan - might overheat the drives just enough.

and there's got to be some sort of power distribution unit, might be that.

other than a bad fan - maybe even if it is a bad fan, a repair will likely be prohibitively expensive...

Does she habitually use it on her bed? or on the couch? The DV5000 has a low tolerance for overheating, and running it for too long at a time on a soft surface, which will obstruct the air flow under and into the machine, will certainly cook a hard drive.

amen.

i had a zd8000 - the big 17" bad boy with full blown desktop pentium 4 proc in it. the thing had three airplane turbo prop sized fans underneath, i always ran it on a lapdesk and the thing still melted its dedicated (and sadly, soldered on) video card.

As eric mentioned, there are only a few culprits that could be responsible:

-power supply
-fan/overheating
-voltage problem on the motherboard

I have talked to a few people and I think that we have come to the conclusion that there is a voltage problem... But i have no clue how to get this fixed... And should the HP people know this if the HD has failed 3 times already?

Well no, you see, technical support people at those companies aren't very bright. They see hard drive problem, they replace the hard drive. They see the same problem two more times, they do the same thing.

Last I checked, doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results was the definition of insanity ;P

So how can I convince her dad that its more then a heat problem (he bought a laptop cooler today haha) and that it needs to be looked at and could have a wireing problem?!!?!

Wait for the hard drive to fail one more time despite a laptop cooler. Then you can show him that it wasn't heat that killed the drives, but rather a more sinister, underlying problem.