Dell Laptop Hard Drive Diagnostics

By Toby Barns

Most Dell laptop and desktop computers will come with a handy utility already built into them for performing at least some form of basic diagnostics when you need to do a little bit of preliminary troubleshooting. This article will show you how to test the hard drive which is installed in your Dell laptop or desktop computer.

Some symptoms which should make you suspect that your hard drive is either going bad or has gone bad to some extent include:

No POST - your laptop or desktop computer just hangs and does nothing when you turn it on. It may sit with the lights on, but do nothing more. It may come on for a couple of seconds and then shut itself back off.

Errors - instead of seeing the Windows splash screen after your laptop completes it's POST you get an error which may mention that there is no boot device, or that maybe there is no mountable volume on the drive.

Sluggish Performance - Often when a hard drive is failing you will be able to have some form of a heads up about this unfortunate fact by witnessing a noticeable decline in your systems performance when you are actually in the laptop's OS (Operating System).

Windows Warning - Microsoft Windows does have the ability to actually warn you through a message which will pop up on your screen letting you know that you should save, then backup all important data immediately because a hard drive failure is imminent. Now, it is not necessarily a good idea to wait until this message is displayed because often times a hard drive will go completely bad, unusable, without this warning message ever showing up on your display screen at all.

On your Dell laptop or desktop computer you will likely find a handy utility which will run a quick test on your hard drive for you. This test is very reliable, at least for determining if your hard drive has actually gone bad.

The way you can access this test is as follows:
Power on your Dell computer, you will see the Dell splash screen, then very briefly you will see a message referring to F2 and F12 in the upper right hand corner of your laptop or desktop screen. The trick is to press the F12 key on your keyboard right when you see the message about F2 and F12 show up in the upper right hand corner of your screen.

This will bring up a BIOS boot menu and you will simply choose the one which refers to the hard drive diagnostics. Different Dell laptop or desktop models will offer different choices based on the hard drive being IDE or SATA. Once you have selected your drive the testing will begin. After around two to five minutes or so, depending on the size of your hard drive, you will see the results of the test. The results will either be a PASS, or a fail error code. The thing to remember with the Dell hard drive diagnostics is that a return error code 7 means that your hard drive does indeed need to be replaced. Backup any important data which you may have on your laptop or desktop computer and replace your hard drive.

Learn alternative ways to run Dell hard drive diagnostics already built into your Dell computer.

Toby Barns is a computer and networking consultant with over ten years experience as an independent representative of many major computer manufactures and retailers. Toby has worked in tech support call centers, led teams of advanced technicians in the computer manufacturing industry, done consulting for retail computer outlets, and as a field representative for many major computer warranty service providers.

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