I'm working on a Dell Inspiron 1520. Was getting BSOD but managed to boot by restoring back the registry. Since I had a problem with this particular machine once before, I decided to run SpinRite this time just to be sure. It's a good thing I did because SpinRite has been running for 86 hours now and is only 17% complete! My main question is this: SpinRite is finding alot of cabling errors (at this time, 189,834 along with 1,913,169 write errors.) This may sound idiotic but, what does that mean? Can you really have a cabling issue on a laptop? If so, this would be the first time I've seen it. Please advise!

I don't know anything about that software but my guess is that the drive is dying. From what I am reading that is a file recovery program. Is that correct? If so an error probably means that it is having trouble reading the disk. It might help us to know the blue screen(s) that you where getting.

Can you really have a cabling issue on a laptop?

Why not? Most, if not all notebook drives still connect by cable, just a much shorter one. And I note the connector is part of the cable. And since notebooks are regularly moved about, it is very likely one could work loose. And while not common, a cable can go bad - typically if there was a slight manufacturing defect in the first place.

If Spinrite lets your abort the scan, I would and reseat the cable connection. Or better yet, install that drive as a secondary drive (not boot drive) in another computer using a Notebook to IDE Hard Drive Adapter (or equivalent if SATA drive) and run SpinRite again. By doing it in a second computer, you eliminate a potentially bad notebook from the equation.

Upon research I have found there is no cable connecting the HDD to the motherboard. The HDD slides into a port on the side of the machine and is retained with four screws. This being said, I have removed and re-installed the HDD to see if perhaps the drive had wiggled loose or something. I will post further results once SpinRite finishes.

There is most likely a cable inside the port that connects to the motherboard.

ckech ur sata cable.. smtimes thy causses probs