Weird Hard Drive problem...

[loganz]

I'm not an IT guy but I know a little about computers. Strange story here...

I took my Asus Netbook computer to Reno with me over the weekend. I've had it for about 9 months and love it so far. At my hotel room I unpacked it and booted it up, surfed the web for ten minutes, and suddenly there was a grinding/clicking noise for about three seconds, the system froze, and a blue screen came up basically saying the computer needs to shut down and has a big problem. This is known as the blue screen of death and usually means you have hardware issues and a lot of time and money are needed.

I tried booting it about 12 times and had the same problem, although this time the amount of usage I could get would depend on how much time it had to cool down. I was really frustrated and thought it was a problem with the fan, memory, or hard drive. This worried me all weekend because I am completely dependent on this thing.

I got home an hour ago, in San Jose, and booted it up and now it's running perfectly (knock on wood.) It's been a full hour and it is just like before, with no problems.

I think this strange failure may have been caused by the high elevation in Reno, at over 4500 feet. This laptop has never had any problems, except for the one time it was at a higher elevation. I googled this and couldn't really find any other experiences, other than that most hard drives might not work over 10,000 feet... but no one actually confirming this.

Has anyone else heard of or had any elevation problems? I think the problem had to do with either the fan or hard drive due to different air pressure. I never even knew this could happen. Hoping this is the last time I see that dreaded blue screen of death.

I would agree with everyone else, most likely it is not an elevation problem as the hard drives are kept "air tight" and usually built with a very sturdy metal shell.

Also what did the "the blue screen of death" say, ? Because usually it will give an error report and through that you can usually nail the problem. For example I had a problem with my RAM and it would show an error report regarding the dumping of the physical memory. But anyhow if you are not having any further problems then you should be fine.

But in regards to possible problems, I would say it must have something to do with the fan system, ram, or just a typical dust problem. As typically when a hard drive has any type of massive problems, like you stated, they usually don't fix themselves, .

-Logan

[daniellevine]

I would agree with everyone else, most likely it is not an elevation problem as the hard drives are kept "air tight" and usually built with a very sturdy metal shell.

Also what did the "the blue screen of death" say, ? Because usually it will give an error report and through that you can usually nail the problem. For example I had a problem with my RAM and it would show an error report regarding the dumping of the physical memory. But anyhow if you are not having any further problems then you should be fine.

But in regards to possible problems, I would say it must have something to do with the fan system, ram, or just a typical dust problem. As typically when a hard drive has any type of massive problems, like you stated, they usually don't fix themselves, .

-Logan

I didn't write down the blue screen numbers. But for everyone who thinks this was not an elevation problem, it's now been weeks and my computer works as good as ever.

In Reno: Tried to use computer 20-25 times. Was successful 0 times. Heard a clicking and whirling each time, followed by a frozen screen, then a bsod.

Outside of Reno: Tried to use computer 500+ times. Had 0 problems. Never had a bsod.

I understand that a lot of you know the finer points about computers; however, the evidence is indisputable that SOMETHING in Reno caused this thing to continually crash. I'm ruling out the temperature because it was in hotel room which was normal temp, and even the next day it didn't work (so it also wasn't a problem with changing temps quickly.)

I admit I was extremely skeptical that this could be an elevation problem. I googled it from my Iphone (which worked fine) and found only theoretical evidence about elevations affecting hard drives, and then only at 10,000+ feet. Reno isn't even half of that. So, at that point I figured either the RAM, Hard Drive, or fan was toast. You can imagine my surprise when I got home to San Jose to find my computer was working exactly as it had pre-Reno.

[Lindagerr]

Today is the first time I saw this thread and at first I was afraid because I love my ASUS netbook. I bought one for my son and helped my sister buy one for her kids. Although I love mine I do think they are not the sturdiest of computers and I think the temperature and altitude could have more of an effect on them then a normal laptop. I have had mine about 6 months now so if you start having more problems please let us know.

[CLEP101]

I agree, I've never seen elevation have an impact on a hard drive. Think about all the hundreds of thousands of people who fly...daily...depending on their laptops for business needs; I'd think we would have heard some kind of warning by now.

I build computers on the side as a hobby, in fact I received a mother board just yesterday for the space age desktop I'm building for myself. The reason for the rebuild is that my hard drive crashed. It came back up long enough for me to rip all the needed files to DVD so in that aspect I was fortunate; I highly recommend you make a backup ASAP. It sounds as though your computer got jostled during your trip and screwed up the disc's that nj593 described. While the drive is back up now, its not a good sign as the the discs in the drive spin at ridiculous speeds and there is no room for error. Did you bump the laptop somewhere along the trip?

As I already recommended, do a complete backup and try not to worry about it; that won't help anything. Whatever is going to happen, will happen with or without worry. Have a Merry Christmas!

I agree with you on this.

I've been all over the world at different elevations with my 4 year old notebook. It's still working fine. Never had a blue screen of death due to elevations. I second the recommendation for Daniellevine to backup all your important files to another disk. When I did have a blue screen of death on my desktop, it ended up being a hard drive problem. you should buy another cheap hard drive just in case it keeps happens again and replace it.

[rickyjo]

Maybe something got jostled back into place during transit. Whatever the case, please consider going to the link I posted before and getting that HDD test just to be safe.

[Lindagerr]

It probably means there is a problem or in his words "the harddrive is on the hairy edge" He thinks the change in altitude and moisture could have caused your hard drive controller has a device that is thermally sensitive and he goes on. The main point he is saying is you should have ASUS check it out before your warrenty is up.

He is not a computer geek by trade it is more like his hobby. He does not always agree with the "Official" Geeks, but he keeps our family and a lot of our friends computers running and he fixes them when we screw them up.