Replacement for ST3750528AS (HD521-2W)

[louielouie]

Have a ~2.5 year old P6267C that contains a Seagate ST3750528AS 7200 SATA hard drive (750/698.6 GB).  Starting to get the dreaded HD521-2W failure during the monthly scan.  A quick search discovered that the ST3750528AS is out of stock and discontinued.  Wondering about a replacement.  For example, one of the newer Hitachi or Western Digital 1 TB drives, which have 64 MB cache and 6.0 GBps transfer rate. (The Seagate has 32 MB cache and 3.0 GBps  transfer rate.)  Short of simply ordering one of the others and giving it a try, thought I'd ask if anyone has any recommendations?  (I tend to avoid like replacements when a failure occurs just after the warranty expires.)    

Thanks in advance.

[Big_Dave]

Hi,

Is your PC running is a RAID configuration? If yes, then you need to match up to the existing hard drive specifications for the best results.

What operating system and service pack level is your PC running?

I have used both Hitachi and Western Digital. You will not see much of a speed improvement (perhaps 10%) going from a SATA II hard drive to a SATA III hard drive.  A larger cache might make a slight difference. I installed a Hitachi 2GB SATA III  64 mb cache hard drive on my e9280t which only has SATA II ports and it runs quite well.

Before you install a new hard drive, go to the Intel site and get the latest version of Intel's Rapid Storage Technology. This will give you the latest SATA drivers.

[louielouie]

The p6267c was a Costco special, so no RAID; it is running Windows 7 Home Premium SP 1.  

[Big_Dave]

HI,

This Hitachi 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB cache SATA II  hard drive should work for your needs.

Be sure that you have a set of the HP recovery disks and backup your data to external media.

There are free hard drive imaging product available which will allow you to make an image of the existing hard drive and copy it to external media (you will need a imaging boot disk) or install the new hard drive as a second hard drive and image copy your existing hard drive to the hard drive. Format the new hard drive before use.

Macrium, Paragon and Acronis all have free imaging software.  I use the full retail version of Paragon Hard Disk Manager Pro (complementary copy).

Review this article on how to use Windows 7 to create backups and a backup image.

These HP 'how-to" articles should be helpful.

[louielouie]

Thank you, Big Dave; the Hitachi sounds good.  And thanks for the pointers to the other articles and hints on copying and imaging.  

[louielouie]

Not sure if I should continue here or open a new thread over in the OS & Recovery forum? 

Anyway, before I got the new Hitachi drive from Egghead, the system (drive) crashed.  Fortunately, I had a set of recovery discs and a recent back of the personal data files.  So today I swapped the dead drive with the new one and booted into Setup to verify the new drive, save and exit; then booted the first recover disc. 

The recovery process formatted the new drive and installed the software (factory reset).  All appeared to go well; the recovery process stated that after Windows was loaded, I would need to reinstall/update software, restore data, and so on.  Pretty normal. 

Then af ter rebooting into Windows 7, I see "Starting Windows" followed by "Setup is starting services."  Then, an error is thrown: "Windows could not complete the installation. To install Windows on this computer restart the installation."  And I get the same error every time I restart the system. So now I am stuck.

The system contains only mouse, keyboard, and monitor ... I removed the printer, network adapter, etc. before starting the recover, as directed. 

Any ideas?