Could be nothing, could be your hard drive failing...or something in between. Given your level of knowledge, and how overwhelming this must be, I think you stand a good chance of spending many hours on this, and/or making the situation worse if you start trying to follow all the ideas you may get here shortly. Some of the info you provided is useful, and some is irrelevant. I know you are trying to do a good job, but you are worrying about too many things at once.

The most important piece of info you provided is that the computer is still under warranty. If you have a 3-year Dell warranty, it's going to expire next month. If I were you, the first thing I would do is get Dell tech support on the phone and have them work through it with you. That way, if it is something really serious, you'll have started a ticket on it in the warranty period. It will also be much better to have them work on it in real time and interactively, rather than you posting here, getting a bunch of ideas, trying them out, and then posting back when those things don't work.

I'm not trying to discourage you...I'm simply suggesting that the best and fastest way to get this addressed is to hand it off to Dell.

Kudzu. Thank you for your wisdom. My experience with Dell support has been abysmal.

Once trying to get info about retrofitting a firewire port (which I ultimately succeeded at after forum descriptions of all the ways Dell led them wrong and had them order wrong parts). Other time was literally a 2 hour conversation where I tried to get them to send me 4 screws for the second hard drive I ordered - in the end, they insisted they couldn't - had no screws - try a local shop. Again, my answers came from elsewhere - namely here and ordering parts from Ebay.

But you're right - it's under warranty and I should start a ticket - even if I expect hours of useless runaround. I do think I should back up my files first - newer photos and word documents in particular (Tivo files are less critical and I probably have copies of what I need, same with music).

I will call them when I get home from work. Still interested in whether anyone has had similar experiences or ideas.

Thank you.
Lynn.

Kudzu right take up with Dell.....

I have seen Dells with the error you listed---> BCcode: 7F BCP1: 00000000 BCP2: 00000000 BCP3: 00000000

BCP4: 00000000 (I think that last digit was a zero - my handwriting is so bad it looks a bit like a 6)
OSVer: 5_1_2600 SP:3_0 Product: 768_1
C:\docume~1\Lynn\locals~1\temp\WERd113.dir00\mini121010.01dmp\sysdata.xml

What was the Stop Error???? From what you posted it looks like the one below:

STOP: 0x0000007F (0x00000000, 0x00000000, 0x00000000, 0x00000000)

The above STOP error means a trap occurred in kernel mode and the trap is either one the kernel is not allowed to have or is always fatal. The most common causes of a STOP 0x7F are:

1 Low-level hardware corruption, such as corrupt memory (RAM)
2 mismatched memory modules
3 A malfunctioning motherboard
4 Information From Microsoft, the basic definition of a Stop 0x0000007 error

or To even start to troubleshoot it....

Help Troubleshoot the Blue Screen of Death with BlueScreenView

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/6292/how-to-troubleshoot-the-blue-screen-of-death/

If the issue continues to happen and no luck with Dell, download Blue Screen View from the above link. Like to see this information from it, the link explains it..

{{gwi:1509686}}

Your window / screen would of course be different as you can see the one above tells you what driver caused the issue, If in fact it is a driver issue at all..

Ok I read everything but I did not see if you said you were able to get the pc booted in any way again after you got that notice?

Kudzu9 is right in his first few sentences and your problem is not as serious as it appears to be. Your error codes indicate the signals to the monitor are out of range when in windows which makes it appear you have changed hardware that does not agree with the registry. This is especially a problem if you use an LCD display. By leaving your computer on all the time you build up ghost characters that sometimes replicate commands, even in the sleep and hibernate modes. They can even assume you are changing hardware. Over time they also cause an overflow in memory. Corporate maintenance always requires server maintenance which basically requires shutting down and rebooting on a schedule. While viewing your desk top, right click in a blank area of the screen, select the "Settings" then click on the square showing "Power". Then select the "Hibernate" tab. If the box next to "Hibernate" is checked, uncheck it. For your uses, hibernate will cause more problems than it will help you.

Turn your computer completely off and wait 20 seconds and turn it back on and let it boot up. If you get any critical error codes, shut the unit back down, wait 20 seconds, turn back on, hit the F8 key when booting and from the menu that pops up, select "last known good configuration". You can even go into safe mode and pick a backup date that was before your problem. I think you'll find this fixes your problem. Try to do a complete shut down and reboot once a week to avoid that type of issue in the future.

Raven - sorry that wasn't clear. I did shut it down and restart it. That's when I first saw a sentence (white letters on black screen) that said there was a hard drive problem. Then I clicked F1 - and all has run fine. I do hear an occasional click.

I'm on my laptop now but can return to my desktop in a while.

Windslam - thanks for your post. boy it would be great if this was minor. I do leave my computer on most of the time. I think the last time I had it shut off overnight was Thanksgiving weekend. So - in effect, I did the first step. I shut down this morning - waited about a minute or two, restarted. I did see that message about the hard drive failure. It gave me 2 choices - F1 or F2. I wasn't clear on the difference and just hit F1 to continue. I backed up my quicken and turbo tax data, word documents and pictures to my second internal hard drive. All that occurred without any problem.

So since it has been running fine (except a couple of occasional clicks), should I assume all is well (but still call Dell to document). Or should I once again, shut down - restart - then hit F8 and select last known good configuation? Is that step still necessary? I am also concerned bc. I spent a few hours on Sunday arranging my pictures in appropriate folders, getting rid of duplicates and generally organizing them in a way that made sense. I'd hate to undo all that work. perhaps the last good configuration will be after Sunday - which would be fine.

So sorry to ask for redundancy - but given what has already occurred, I want to double check. I can always shut down and restart - but I don't want to mess with going back to other configurations or restore points if it's not necessary or might mess with the picture organizing I did on Sunday.

Thanks.
Lynn.

Sorry I thought you had a stop error....

If your hearing clicks and you have already have had a hard drive error it's possible the drive is going to fail or could at any moment so make sure all the data is backed up, the files you create, pictures, quicken, etc.

If the computer is running and booting ok, there is no reason to do a Last known good configuration or a System Restore, those options are generally used for a current unstable computer and yours is running ok at the moment, restoring the registry now makes no sense. And that's what the Last known good configuration does and system restore.

Google Hard drive clicks or google hard drive sounds.

I would like to back up to my external hard drive - but it already has 459GB our of 596GB used from the first complete Acronis back up of my C drive (the first full one was 367GB, and the second back up was 68GB). Both say Acronis True Image Backup Archive. I assume the second one of 68GB was just incremental - although I don't think I knew what I was selecting.

It seems I don't have enough room for a third back-up on that drive - if it's likely to be as large as the second backup (68GB). These back-ups were in May and July (gee, I thought I had done that in the fall). I haven't mastered Acronis yet - and how to do incremental back-ups. And if I should do another back up but have it overwrite the second back-up?

I know a lot of that was video - shouldn't be much more video at this point. What I really want to get on that drive is changes to software, program files, bookmarks, etc (although I do have Xmarks - so I'm okay there). I've customized Firefox in so many ways I'd hate to start over. And of course all the program updates.

So it seems I have 3 choices (there's probably more options that I haven't figured out).
1 - back up everything on my second internal hard drive (which has plenty of free space - over 1TB free on a 1.5 TB drive)
2 - figure out a way to back up just what I need (if my hard drive fails) on to my current 650GB external hard drive - but I would have to create space - or figure out a way to overwrite - or figure out what incremental pieces are needed
3 - buy another larger external hard drive. do a complete back up. Hope that my C drive doesn't fail between now and then (a few days).

It is worth noting that I haven't heard clicks in the last couple of hours. There were just a few random clicks before - which I wouldn't have noticed at all if I hadn't gotten scared by those messages.

I have all my documents backed up already. it's all the program files, drivers, settings, etc.

Thank you.
Lynn.

PS - should I run checkdisk?

First of all - I know I have to call Dell - but without getting into my family drama, I have not had the 1-2 hours it might take to stay on the phone and troubleshoot. My husband has assured me he'll find time to let me get to it this weekend - maybe today.

Meantime, my computer is not set to hibernate. Good.

From googling hard drive click, I saw a recommendation to run chckdsk - so I let that run last night. I ran it last night - which requires restarting the computer. When it restarted I got this message:

"Notice - hard drive self monitoring has reported that a parmater has exceeded it's normal operating range. Dell recommends that you back up your data regularly - a parameter out of range may or may not indicate a potential hard (here there were no more words - but it seemed it was going to say "failure").

I went ahead and let chckdsk run over night. I understand that when chckdsk finishes, it restarts the computer. So when I looked at the computer this morning, it had the same message about the hard drive parameter exceeding its normal operating range.

The choices I had were F1 (continue) or F2 (set up). I choice F1 (since I have no idea what I'd do with "set up." The computer boots fine - so far no noise. I'm in firefox now.

So can anyone tell me what it means that a parameter is exceeded it's normal operating range?

If it's on it's way to dying, I just wondered if I should use Acronis to make an exact current duplicate on my second internal hard drive (which is newer - bought 1 year ago but installed 6 months ago - and 1.5 TB. Then I could use that second drive as my primary drive - and ultimately replace the C drive?

I think I'm best off letting Dell do most of that. Except making the exact duplicate using Acronis. If others think I should do that, I could use help - instructions or pointing me in the right direction.

Thank you.
Lynn.
PS - I have backed up everything from the C drive I could find (except my videos). I didn't do videos bc. it's about 260GB - I already have copies of what I need and I didn't want to tax the hard drive unnecessarily. But by piecemeal, I mean I opened explorer - and then one by one, copied the folders and files within C: to the second internal hard drive. I worry that this didnt' really capture everything - and wouldn't serve as a replica if I needed it.

So it occurred to me - just google this.

Here's what I found:

A "threshold exceeded" value is intended to indicate that there is a relatively high probability that the drive will not be able to honour its specification in the future � that is, the drive is "about to fail". The predicted failure may be catastrophic or may be something as subtle as the inability to write to certain sectors, or perhaps slower performance than the manufacturer's declared minimum.

So it sounds like it may or may not spell impending death.

So my remaining question would be how to best clone the C drive - to the second internal hard drive. Is this my best option? I don't want to back it up and overwrite the current external hard drive in case it fails while doing this and that would wipe out the back up I have from the summer.

I know I can look at the Acronis online manuals - but this is scary stuff to me and I'd feel more confident if someone here told me - yes - follow the instructions on these pages - or in this section. Seems there are several choices I have and I want to select the correct procedure.

Thank you.
Lynn.

Okay. I called Dell which was as unpleasant as I expected. Over an hour - lots of time on hold - to have them say they would send a technician to replace hard drive with another seagate 500GB hard drive - with pre-installed Windows XP and Dell Drivers.

But they won't transfer any programs, settings, or data. Even if I make a clone, it's up to me to restore. I have the option to keep the hard drive for $49 (in case I'm worried I haven't saved all the data and still want to get a professional - or me with the guidance of wonderful folks here - to save and transfer the data later). I think it's worth saving the drive for $49 just for piece of mind. My understanding is that while this drive is likely headed to failure, that the hard drive message I got doesn't always indicate failure. so just in case I don't clone and back-up everything, I'd have the hard drive if needed.

So now I've called Dell. I've backed up my data files - and I think my program files - but not through a clone of the hard drive. I took out my Acronis 2010 manual - and I have the instructions to clone the hard drive. Let me just check here:

should I clone the current C: hard drive to my second internal hard drive (plenty of room)? Will it be easy enough to then recreate that drive on the newly replaced C drive? Will it be a problem that the new C hard drive will come pre-installed with XP and Dell Drivers? Will a restore onto this new drive just overwrite that stuff? Or recreate just what needs to be recreated?

One more thing:
Should I also get a second external hard drive to do a fresh clone of the hard drive to it? Before this original hard drive is replaced?

Either way, I've concluded I need a large external hard drive so I can make monthly full back-ups - and weekly incrementals (I was reading the manual - I may set those incremental back-ups for middle of the night). I just don't know if I need to rush and do that before the C drive is replaced. Is it sufficient now to clone the hard drive to my second internal hard drive?

thank you.
Lynn.

PS - short of a full clone and restore - in case that doesn't work, are there ways to save my firefox with the extensions and customizations I've made?

PPS - anything else I should think of?

check out these tutorials on another forum I am on they are pretty good.

Step-by-step instruct for Images: Acronis 2010

Acronis 2011 backup image instructions

and for using the free Macrium backup
Step-by-step instruct on creating image: Macrium

for firefox I would use xmarks to back up everything including your profile and settings. There are a few other good extensions that will do full backups also, FEBE is one
FEBE 6.3.3.2

I would keep the drive for $49 and you can always just get an external enclosure and slap that drive into it and connect it by usb to access what is on it.

If Dell puts in the new drive with xp loaded then you can either choose to use it as it is and input all your files and programs or once they have done that you could clone the drive using your clone image you created using Acronis or what ever image program you used.

I think I would also do a clone of that brand new drive install while it is clean and fresh just in case you should ever need it too.

lynnalexandra-
I'd say "just" an hour on the phone with tech support and getting them to come and install a new hard drive is a pretty good deal. It's too bad you have to do this, but I'm glad they came through for you. And it sounds better than burning up a lot of your time stumbling through possible fixes on your own.

I can sympathize. I bought an expensive Sony Vaio 2 years ago and the hard drive -- a Seagate -- just bricked up on me one day with no warning after I had had the computer for just a year. It, too, had to be replaced. Fortunately, I regularly backup my files and photos, so I didn't lose anything. It was just annoying.

Oh boy. I am getting more confused. Raven - I started reading those threads you linked and I'm overwhelmed. In trying to give simple instructions, it got very complicated and the distinctions between cloning and backup image are more confusing to me now than ever. So let me please ask a few questions:

1 - should I clone (instead of backup)?
2 - can I clone to the second internal hard drive? will i be able to access it? or should I clone to an external hard drive?
(we had an unused buffalo 500gb portable hard drive that I was going to use for my daughter's computer - but no rush on that. I decided I needed to clone my hard drive first - before it crashes. I got worried that I might not be able to access the second internal hard drive. No idea if that's right or not. So I'm first reformatting the drive to ntfs. it's been over an hour and it's 2/3 done. maybe I'll have other advice here before it's done.)

3 - I did make a bootable rescue cd in May when I bought Acronis. But I never verified it - and see from those links Raven provided that people have had problems with thinking they had good bootable rescue drives - but turned out they weren't good. Since I didn't test mine, I think i have 3 options. Don't know which to do:
1 - see if I can boot from it? I would need instructions bc. I have no idea what that means or how to do it. Do I have to test it on my pc? I want to minimize wear and tear on this hard drive - to extend it's life until I've created the clone/backup I need. Can I test this bootable cd in another computer? I have other XP computers.

2 - make a new bootable rescue drive - and this time be sure to verify that it works? i think this is an option in the Acronis software that i will pay more attention to if i create another bootable cd.

3 - okay - I'm so confused I don't recall what I thought a third option would be. maybe it was what order to do things - create a new bootable cd? test the bootable cd I made in May? Clone now - and keep my fingers crossed?

-----------------------------------------
Raven - how do I use Xmarks to back up my profiles and settings. It is saving my bookmarks already. I didn't realize it could save profile and settings.
------------------------------------------------
Kudzu - yeah. An hour on the phone and they're sending someone out isn't bad - when I consider I spent nearly 2 hours with them earlier in the year to get screws for my hard drive bay - and they insisted they didn't have them. Unless I took out the new second hard drive and mailed it back to show them there were no screws, they wouldn't/couldn't sell me just the screws.

-----------------------------
Raven - great idea to clone the new drive that Dell puts in - when everything is fresh. I think it would be a lot more work to put all my other programs and files in - rather than doing a full restore - but clearly I don't fully grasp this process yet. I am also thinking that I'm basically doing all the work - restoring the contents of the C drive is the hard stuff. The technician swapping out the drive is nothing. I could do that. So I'm wondering if this isn't an opportunity to get a new larger drive. If I'm going to clone to a new hard drive, why not put in a larger hard drive? Then I could keep the one Dell gave me as a back up if I should run into any trouble. I sort of hate to override the XP and Dell drivers they'll have on it - what if I just wipe it out. And the restores don't work (as I see they don't always - esp. in the hands of a novice operator like myself).
----------------------------------------------
on the positive note - thank goodness I got Acronis and did some backing up in May and later in the summer. And while I'm waiting for the buffalo ext. hard drive to reformat, I am tackling my daughter's computer fan issue. Cleaned it out better than before - even added a drop of oil under the label. Now it's time to put it back together and see if it works better.

Thanks.
Lynn.

Lynn, whether you do the clone to the other internal drive or to an external one is your choice. I think I might do it to the large internal drive that you have and then make it my primary drive. But that's a matter of choice for you. The reason a clone is important is that this would have all your MS updates and all the programs you have installed, whereas the new HDD that Dell is sending won't have all this.

When my HDD failed a couple of months ago, I did a clone to an external drive just before it failed, and then when the new drive came from Western Digital under warranty, all I had to do was the Restore function, and I was back in business. Acronis is hard for me to understand, too, but at least I got that right. Good luck to you.

Hi, Lynn, I sympathize with your ordeal having gone through a similar incident in Oct. I have a very long thread here with the heading 'I messed up my Computer, big time.'

Also a Dell machine, I found their support very helpful and they got me back to business. My situation was different because I was dealing with a corrupt Windows issue but I was forced to reinstall Windows and as a result had to reinstall everything. My computer was 3 yrs old.

I knew I would lose everything and I didn't have a clone. I backed everything up on various drives, flash drives and external drives. I also uploaded most of my photos and many documents to A-Drive (thank you Raven) which offers 50GB free storage. I had foxmarks which saved all my settings for Firefox.

I could not locate my original disks and Dell provided XP3 and the drivers and utilities. They walked me through the reinstall by phone and it went smoothly. I had no problems. I reinstalled my programs and then downloaded and copied my backups. Everything went in easily. The computer runs better than it did when I bought it I think Windows was corrupt from the beginning but I just thought the 'quirks' were just the way the computer ran. Now everything works perfectly.

I'm not sure why cloning is better than backing up. If you have all your program disks, it is easy to just put your data back in. All my photos and music went back as they were copied. I was surprised that everything was organized just the way it was. A-Drive was great. I uploaded everything there and it was so easy to download it back.

I couldn't locate my Office 07 disk and Microsoft was no help. Dell eventually replaced it for me at no charge. My computer was also under an extended warranty.

I don't know if my info is of any help, but I just wanted you to know that backing up works very well. Once Windows is installed, you can return your data at your own leisure.

I received so much support from the good people on this forum, I couldn't imagine going through what I did without them. Ravencajun gave me great links and suggestions as did Mike, Mikie and many others.

Good luck,
Jane

Thanks.
Grandms - good to hear that cloning and restoring worked for you. I am cloning now - about 25% progress (I have about 350GB data). I am doing it to an external hard drive - maybe I will also clone to the second internal hard drive if I get a chance.

Jane - thank you for your support. Your ordeal sounds just horrendous. And the good folks here have saved me numerous times as well. Thank you - to all of you who offer us so much.

I am cloning now. I couldn't find anything in Raven's links to the Acronis instructions - or instructions I think I printed from her links in the summer - that made it clear whether to clone or full backup. In fact, one set of instructions labels the section cloning - but then describes making the selection to do a full backup. Some of the Windows Secret Lounge threads seem to show a lot of misunderstanding of the distinction. I am still not clear which I should do.

I may be gaining a little clarity, however, on what to do with the new replacement drive. Just realized from Raven's posting - that if I backup the Dell replacement drive - then I don't have to be so worried about wrecking the XP and dell drivers if the restore messes up - or overwrites but doesn't work. I was taking it to mean that I could then take out the Dell replacement - and save it - and put in my own empty drive. But I guess I could also just overwrite it with a restore - once I make a fullbackup. The one thing that has me concerned is that i do have instructions from Gene Barlow's user group relations for Acronis - and it says to put in an empty drive to restore to. I don't now if that's just bc. it's going to overwrite everything - so no point in having anything already on there? Or does having stuff already on the drive interfere with the restore function?

I will be truly amazed - and grateful - if at the end of this I'm actually able to restore all my programs (Word, various video and photo editing software, anti-spyware, antivirus, ccleaner, thunderbird, firefox, Tivo desktop plus, and so much more) - without having to spend hours recreating - reinstalling - or redownloading those programs. I think I am fairly confident I got my data saved - since I did it with two methods. One using explorer to copy the files to my second internal hard drive. And then also the cloning of the original hard drive. That should cover it. But if my hard drive is still alive after this cloning, I think I'll try A drive - for my pictures, word docs, turbo tax and quicken files - the really critical stuff.

I have now been at this for about 10 hours today (I did fix my daugher's computer while waiting for things to format, clone, etc).

Thanks.
Lynn.

yes that is why I said I would also clone the fresh new drive that Dell puts in that way should something go wrong you would at least still have that good clean xp install you can use.

cloning is the way to go when you want to replace an entire drive with a new drive, cloning does exactly that it clones the entire drive.
the system backups done with Acronis are more often used on the same drive in instances like if you did an update that totally messed up your system, then you can use your last good Acronis image and restore that same drive as it was to the date you had done the image.

Good luck I am sure you will get it done!

Thanks, Raven. I'm glad I did the clone then. I also registered and posted on the Windows Secret Lounge threads that you linked for me above. Some folks there seem to think I could have a problem if I restore from a clone of a failing hard drive. Not entirely sure if the concern is that the drive's failing may mean the clone didn't get done correctly (some pieces may be missing/corrupt - not functioning properly). Or if it means that I've somehow captured the defect - and will recreate it on the new drive if I restore from this clone.

Do you have any thoughts about this. It's pretty confusing to me.

I am going to just go ahead and put a larger hard drive in there - since I'm going to the trouble to replacing and restoring. Might as well upgrade to 2TB (I'm getting the black caviar you recommended on my other thread). So I think I'll receive the black caviar drive well before the Dell technician gets out here. If I get it all up and working, I might have him just give me the drive in case - but not actually install it. (I assume it's a no-no to put it in my daughter's computer - although she has a legitimate, legal copy of Windows XP and Dell drivers - hers is an older computer - maybe the drivers are different and that wouldn't work anyway. Just trying to think outside the box)

Thank you.
Lynn.

That would be my concern about cloning. What if something is corrupt in Windows. Wouldn't the same thing carry over?

jane

As it happens, things have changed. The technician Dell sent came with the replacement hard drive (with pre-installed XP and drivers). He installed it - booted - and the same hard drive warning occurred. Turns out it was my second internal hard drive (that I use for data) that was going bad. It was a good thing I already had the 2TB replacement. So he put the 2TB drive in - returned my original hard drive - and all functioned well - no hard drive error messages.

Now I do have work ahead of me - but this changes the nature of it. Much better scenario - but still requires thinking through.

There are probably just a few video files on the second internal hard drive that I don't have copies of. I think they're still accessible - so I will either get a docking station - or better yet an enclosure (since I will need one anyway - as I'll describe later) to put it in - and see if I can transfer those video files to my new 2TB internal drive. I think it makes sense to test that drive to see what's wrong with it - if it's repairable by Windows XP (I think if I run chkdsk there are possibilities to repair some damage?). Should I do this? Or are there other methods to safely test out the health of my hard drive? It is also a Western Digital. The timing of the hard drive failure is now making more sense. I had spent the previous weekend backing up lots of data files onto this second internal 1.5 TB hard drive. I think some of those transferred Tivo files might be problematic. (I say that for 2 reasons - when I've tried to defrag the hard drive, I recall a few files that couldn't be defragged - and while it was hard to see the path, I think they were the Tivo videos. Also, there were a few Tivo videos that failed to work properly when I tried to run VideoRedo to remove commercials. Some just seemed to be bad files - of course, I don't recall which those ones were - but it makes me wonder if it's the sources of the problem on that second hard drive.)

Next step is call Dell - I bought that second hard drive from them 1 1/2 yrs ago. It has a 3 yr warranty. I'm not sure if the warranty will be honored by Dell or Western Digital (the brand of drive). So I figure I'll be getting a replacement 1.5 TB hard drive - which I can either install internally - use it as program drive or data drive. I can use the original 500GB drive externally. Or maybe I should keep it the way it is now. Original 500GB internal hard drive, second 2 TB internal hard drive - and put the replacement 1.5 TB hard drive in an enclosure and use for back-ups. One reason I'd like to use the 2TB drive as a program/boot drive (or master drive - I'm not sure of the language) is bc. it's supposed to be a faster drive - Western Digital Black Caviar 2TB drive - 7200rpm and 64MB Cache that was a bit pricier, but I thought it was worth it for quality and speed.

It's this one: http://www.amazon.co...ref=oss_product (although I paid less than the price listed online)

I'm new enough at all this that I don't understand everything about hard drive speed. I think that a larger drive can potentially slow things down a bit as it has to work to see date over a larger area/amount of data - but that the 7200rpm and 64MB cache will offer more speed - and the reviews suggest this thing is fast. I'd love any guidance in weighing these factors as I decide which to make the primary drive.

I also want to clarify what to do with this drive. I don't know how to partition. And if I did, how large a partition should I create on this 2TB drive - if it were to hold the operating systems and programs? I don't know how much room that takes - and how to be sure to take the appropriate sections of my original drive to place into this partition. I can figure out what size each portion of my original hard drive is? I just don't know which folders go into the partition for programs/software? I don't want to leave any out - and I'm concerned I will miss some folders bc. I do not recognize what they are.

If I partition the drive, I gather I don't clone it - but do it in sections. I also don't know if I should format it first. Or partition first. Disk management is fairly new to me although I did format a couple of drives. I didn't get into partitions and copying from one drive to another.

Does it make sense to use this 2TB drive (which I bought for it's speed and good functioning) as the main drive? If so, I don't know the order of operations? Clone my original drive to this drive? Format and partition first (in which case I'll need to know how to get the proper system files vs. data files into the right partitions).

I think I know that if I make this 2TB the master, I have to either switch the cables - but since I think they won't stretch to the second hard drive bay, I'll probably have to swap them.

I am so relieved not to have lost my original drive. Although it consumed the better part of last weekend, I did learn plenty - and feel more confident cutting my "recovery" teeth on recovering data from the bad second drive which only has some video at stake.

Just as a reminder my original drive has about 350GB data.

Thanks everyone.
Lynn.

PS - I did learn a couple of important things from this technician. First, he updated the bios in my computer (which was several versions old). And he told me where to go to update the bios on my daughter's computer. That was useful. It's a question I've had for a while when I see people on this forum ask whether someone has updated their bios.

Thanks for the detailed update. That's good news, and interesting. And for all the flak that Dell Tech Support gets, it sound like you lucked out here...especially since we and you didn't spend innumerable hours trying to fix the drive that wasn't bad!