Hey guys I think my hard drive is going bad, but I'd like a second opinion. Here in North Carolina USA, it's been 100+ degrees lately, the biggest heat wave we've seen in quite awhile. During these hot days, the fan on the Dell Latitude laptop I have has been coming on, sometimes even when it's idle. I noticed too that the hard drive has been slow sometimes when it's hot outside. I've noticed that sometimes when I go to open a program, sometimes a graphic will take a long time to appear. During this lag, the hard drive activity light is on constantly, till I hear a strange noise from the drive and then the graphic will load. When I play music, the same thing happens except the music sounds like an old record that's stuck; until I hear the noise, and the song keeps going. One particularly hot night, the hard drive was idle, but made a real loud clicking noise all of sudden. I shut the laptop down for the rest of the night and turned it on the next morning and all was well. On cooler days, even in the lower 90s, it's fine. What's going on? To me this sounds like hard drive failure. Thanks for your opinions.

Christianity is NOT a religion. It is a relationship with Jesus Christ.

well possibly but it could just be overheating, you can buy laptop cooling pad (link below) when computers get too hot they do tend to slow down and become sluggish and this can intern cause more problems, i suggest you get yourself one of these coolers and also, clean out any other the vent holes and fan holes with a vacum cleaner. Possibly your harddrive has had it but i wont take that as the definitive answer until you try cooling.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/3-Fan-USB-280...

Hey thanks alot for that, that gives me some hope. I'll certainly clean it out then maybe try out one of those coolers. You've been very helpful.

Christianity is NOT a religion. It is a relationship with Jesus Christ.

no problems mate, let us know if that makes any difference, could help someone else oneday if they have the same problems and they end up reading this thread.

Ok I will. Thanks again.

Christianity is NOT a religion. It is a relationship with Jesus Christ.

It is very ,really improbable the outside temperature is causing you the problems the difference in temp is negotiable,its like saying does haveing a light near increase the working temp of the computer,ive heard very bad reliability reports about DELL computers it is more probably this

Thanks for that, however at my house (where this laptop lives), there are 2 window air conditioning units in other rooms (due to the building structure of the house, Central cannot be installed). Those units don't cool the whole part of the house. Therefore when it's hot outside, it gets warmer in the rooms where the air does not reach.

Christianity is NOT a religion. It is a relationship with Jesus Christ.