So Your Laptop Hard Drive Is Broken
One of the most visited posts I have written is the one discussing my laptop hard drive failure. So I thought I might add a little bit more information. Laptop hard drive failures are one of the most common problems faced by laptop owners. Some symptoms of hard drive failures include:
-Problems opening or saving files
-Computer seems slow opening files or starting programs
-Computer hangs or crashes when opening files or starting programs
-Computer operating system (Windows) does not boot
-Files seems to be missing or corrupted
Even if your laptop does not boot, you can test the hard drive in BIOS. All computers first start in BIOS mode. To stay in BIOS mode you need to hit a special key before the operating systems would start. What the special key is typically appears on screen when you turn on the computer. Most common keys are F2 and ESC. The BIOS hard drive self test can be used to check the hard drive for errors.
Another option is to have a boot disk. Windows does not ship with boot discs anymore, but you can make boot discs or operating system backup disks in Windows (best to do this before your hard drive starts to fail). If you have a working boot disk then you can get the computer into command prompt or safe mode and run disk utilities such as CHKDSK to check your hard drive.
In the end, you will find out that the hard drive is failing. Don’t be too surprised by this as it is now a fairly common problem. The question now is what your going to do about it. If your laptop is still under warranty then you should try to get a replacement from the manufacturer. If you cannot get a replacement from the manufacturer than you can buy them fairly inexpensively. Just make sure to get one that is the same as the one you have (check that it is either IDE or SATA for instance).
If you want to get data off the old hard drive and onto the new one then one cheap way, after you install the operating system on the new hard drive, is to use something like SuperLink which can connect the old hard drive to the computer using a USB 2.0 port.
If you want to make sure that all of the data is off your hard drive before sending it back then you should use something like Boot and Nuke. The best way to use Boot and Nuke is to burn it to CD and then turn on the computer with the old hard drive in it and the Boot and Nuke CD in the CD drive. I would destroy your nuke afterwards - you don’t want it going off accidentally.
