HP CQ10-100 CTO PC, CQ10-100EB PC, CQ10-110SB PC, CQ10-112NR PC, CQ10-120CA PC Technical White Paper

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HP CQ10-100 CTO PC, CQ10-100EB PC, CQ10-110SB PC, CQ10-112NR PC, CQ10-120CA PC Technical White Paper

HP Notebook Hard Drives & Solid State

Drives

Identifying, Preventing, Diagnosing and

Recovering from Drive Failures

Care and Maintenance Measures

Technical White Paper

Table of contents

 

Identifying, Preventing, Diagnosing, and Recovering from Drive Failures ....................................................

2

Introduction .....................................................................................................................................

2

Symptoms of Hard Drive (HDD) Performance Issues..............................................................................

2

Hard Drive / Solid State Drive Troubleshooting Flowchart.....................................................................

4

Hard Drive & Solid State Drive Diagnostics .........................................................................................

5

Advanced Diagnostics - Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI)......................................................

5

HP 3D Drive Guard..........................................................................................................................

5

Firmware & Product Updates .............................................................................................................

6

Intel Matrix Storage Technology driver ...............................................................................................

6

Installing SATA drivers......................................................................................................................

6

Care and Maintenance Measures..........................................................................................................

7

Preparing Advanced Format HDDs for Microsoft Windows installations..................................................

7

Hard Drive Mounting Bracket ............................................................................................................

7

HP CMI - Client Management Interface ...............................................................................................

7

Additional HP Recommendations for Optimizing Performance on Products with Older Operating Systems ..

7

For more information ........................................................................................................................

8

Identifying, Preventing, Diagnosing, and Recovering from Drive Failures

Introduction

This white paper explains how companies and users can reduce the risk of hard drive failures. These measures include enhanced hard drive diagnostics, Intel Storage Matrix Technology, HP 3D drive guard, firmware updates, and more. The following sections explain how to identify and possibly prevent hard drive (HDD) and Solid State Drive (SSD) failures.

Symptoms of Hard Drive Issues

The symptoms of hard drive issues can be traced to connector issues, shock events, software issues, and more. The following sections summarize some of these.

Connector issues

It is important to check the physical connector that extends from the hard drive to the system board. A hard drive that is not detected by the BIOS or operating system may need adjustment.

Note: The following information is not applicable to Solid State Drives. In the event of an issue with an SSD, the HP Diagnostics should be run. Symptoms may include the following:

The SSD drive is no longer recognized by the notebook.

You receive an error message during Power On Self-Test (POST) that says "Imminent drive failure."

Your notebook spontaneously restarts when the Windows OS is running.

Shock events

With each new generation of hard drives, manufacturers make improvements to the drive’s susceptibility to shock events. However, hard drives are fragile, and if they are exposed to shock events beyond their specifications, they can fail.

Shock events can cause read/write head misalignment, or contact between the read/write heads and the media, resulting in symptoms such as a clicking noise, the failure to complete servo, and/or an inaccessible boot device message.

Typically, these symptoms result from a significant bump or drop, due to the following factors:

Non-operational shock (when the notebook is turned off) –or–

Operational shock (when the unit is turned on and the hard drive is reading or writing data)

Shock events may cause different error messages to be displayed such as “Non-system disk” or “No boot device”.

Software issues

Some hard drive performance problems appear to mimic hard drive failure, but may actually be caused by software issues. These software issues include (but are not limited to):

File corruption

File fragmentation

Read errors

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File Corruption

One of the most difficult software problems to trace is file corruption, because corruption occurs very easily during routine computer handling. For example, powering off the notebook before the OS has completed the shutdown process can create corrupted boot files that ultimately result in blue screens and/or continuous reboots.

Issues such as blue screens, application lockups, and other occurrences are caused by write splices. A write splice is an incomplete write to a sector of the HDD. Upon the next read of that sector, the OS encounters incomplete data, and marks this area as a bad sector. The OS remaps a reserved sector in its place.

If write splices continue to occur with increasing frequency, errors such as blue screens, application lockups, and other occurrences will result, because the HDD has reached the Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) attribute threshold. S.M.A.R.T. technology was developed by a number of major hard drive manufacturers to increase reliability of drives. For more information on S.M.A.R.T attribute checking, refer to the “Client Management Software” section in this white paper.

File Fragmentation

Hard drive performance is also degraded when file fragmentation is not reduced by regular software maintenance. Over time, the hard drive file structure becomes fragmented due to continuous creating, editing, copying, and deleting of files. New data is written to the hard drive on a “first available space” basis. Fragmentation occurs when an entire file or application is not stored contiguously on the hard drive. Once fragmentation occurs, the hard drive throughput performance is impacted, because it must seek the data from multiple locations across the hard drive.

Read Errors

HDDs can experience issues due to read errors. In this situation, a low-level format of the drive can be performed. Refer to your HDD manufacturer for low-level format utilities or download the HP File Sanitizer for HP ProtectTools, located at the following website:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&pro dTypeId=321957&prodSeriesId=4138624&prodNameId=4138625&swEnvOID=4054&swLang=13& mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=ob-86982-1

Other software issues may include viruses, application, and operating system (OS) bugs. To address these issues, refer to your software Help for more information.

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