So, my weekend project was a Dell Inspiron N4110 that wasn't working for a year.

Initial diagnosis suggested a new Hard Drive and a new keyboard were in order. Got a HGST Travelstar 500GB 5400RPM and a Genuine Dell Keyboard.

Last night, I fixed the new HDD to the laptop and began to install Windows. Everything was going fine. The initial installation finished, the computer restarted and was asking me to choose my time zone. This is when things started to go wrong.

The screen turned blue with some text written for a fraction of a second and rebooted. Then I got an error:

"A disk read error occurred
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart"

Sure enough, a restart didn't help. I tried installing Windows again. But, the "Copying Windows Files" bit didn't cross 0%. I tried formatting, but it just froze at the formatting screen. I tried formatting with a bootable EaseUS, but again to no avail.

I thought the new HDD had conked off. Before deciding on the same, I removed the new HDD, fixed it to my desktop and proceeded to install Windows 7 on it. It went on flawlessly and the whole process was completed.

I then moved this HDD back to the laptop only to be met with the same error.

I restored BIOS settings to default and tried cleaning the disk using disk part. Now the error message showed "Operation System Not Found". When I tried to install Windows again, screen either froze at the Formatting screen or the "Copying Windows Files" bit did not cross 0%. But none of this happened on the other PC to which the HDD was connected.

The HDD is shown in the BIOS as well as the boot menu. I also tried swapping out RAM to eliminate any possibilities of RAM causing issues.

I took it to a local repair shop assuming the SATA port was damaged. He got the same errors when he tried loading Windows 7 off of a USB drive. But when he swapped out the new HDD I had put in for a Seagate he had for testing, it worked perfectly!

I got back home and performed a Drive Fitness Test using a Hitachi Utility. Gave me no errors.



Any ideas?

But hasn't the Hitachi utility tested that as well? The SmartSelfTest should be just that, right?

What could be wrong though? How is one hard drive working on the laptop while another is?