# Dell Latitude D620 - read failure on internal hard drive



## tcsllc (Jan 16, 2011)

I am a computer tech and I have a client that has a Dell Latitude D620 running XP Professional. Problem is that when you turn it on it gets to a black screen that says "read failure on internal hard drive". 

Obviously from the message it seems like a bad hard drive. I have ran the 1st part of Dell Diagnostics with no problems found. The 2nd part of Dell Diagnostics wont run which I'm guessing because it can't find it on the hard drive.

Hard drive is a Seagate 100GB drive. Ran the hard drive test using Seatools and Passed both the Basic and Advance tests. I downloaded the Dell Diagnostics bootable cd and ran a custom test on the hard drive and it gave me the read error.

I installed a brand new hard drive, booted from CD and installed Windows to the point where it restarts to run the setup. Windows restarted and I get the same error message "read failure on internal hard drive"

I tested the new drive just to make sure it wasn't a lemon and it passed the seatools basic and advanced tests. I haven't tried the Dell Diagnostics test yet. 

At this point I'm starting to think it is something else as it doesn't seem that the original hard drive is bad in the first place. I'm able to access the drive on other machine no problem and even did a clone to another drive just in case it had bad sectors (which seatools should have picked up) and it didn't find any. I used a program called WinHex.

The machine is running Bios version A08 and although Dell has A10 out, it doesn't say anything about this kind of problem in the release notes.

I know there are probably a few other variables that I can rule out but I wanted to throw this out there and see if anyone has ever seen this kind of issue before. I did some searching before posting this and it seems like most people had a hard drive issue which fix it and I couldn't find anything else.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks,
Gabe


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## GZ (Jan 31, 2010)

Did you run a memory test to rule out memory corruption?


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## tcsllc (Jan 16, 2011)

I did run a memtest and it passed. It only shows 1 module on the bottom of the machine which I pulled out to test the internal one which is probably under the keyboard or something. I didn't think memory would throw that kind of message but who knows, i've seen some weird things before. I'll try pulling the other module when I get in on Monday just to make sure it's seated correctly. 

Anything else that I might be missing?


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## GZ (Jan 31, 2010)

I have seen odd things too. Memory can do screwy things. 

You replaced the drive with a known good drive... so chances are the issue is not with the HDD.
I would check the SATA connector for damage, and check the board for signs of damage as well.


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## tcsllc (Jan 16, 2011)

So I checked the other DIMM that was located under the keyboard. Memory was seated properly, removed it and put it in slot 2, same issue. 

BIOS is seeing the 320GB drive no problem. When the machine turns on it takes about 2 minutes for the message to even pop up. I didn't see anything wrong with the motherboard physically, everything is really clean.

Running the Dell Diagnostics on the new drive just to see what the error message is.

Anyone have any ideas as to what is causing this message?


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## GZ (Jan 31, 2010)

There are a lot of things it could be, from a malfunctioning SATA controller to a bit of dust causing a bad connection somewhere and everything in between.

I suggest you run through the usual gamut of troubleshooting to see if you can narrow down the issue. It could, very well, be a faulty MB component.


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## tcsllc (Jan 16, 2011)

I ran Dell Diagnostics again and got this error code

Error Code 0F00:0228
Msg: Block 130: Timeout waiting for the drive not busy.

I found this post that has several Dell Diagnostics Error Codes: This one I'm getting seems to be: 
0F00-02XX​ disk.mdm 
Read Test

Hard Drive
Cable
Motherboardhttp://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/troubleshooting/9094-dell-diagnostic-error-codes.html

It's not the hard drive, no cable so I guess it is the motherboard...


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## GZ (Jan 31, 2010)

gavinzach said:


> I have seen odd things too. Memory can do screwy things.
> 
> You replaced the drive with a known good drive... so chances are the issue is not with the HDD.
> *I would check the SATA connector for damage, and check the board for signs of damage as well*.


This includes cold solder joints and cracked traces, which could be read as a cable failure.


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