Oh shit

[MoonCat]

Walked away from my laptop last night for about half an hour...came back to a black screen with a message telling me that a hard drive failure was imminent, and I should back up my files and replace the hard drive.

WTF??

Tried shutting it down and booting up again, still getting a screen telling me it shut down to prevent damage to the computer, back up your stuff, etc. But how can I back up anything when I can't get past that screen?? It told me to press F8 to get to safe mode---that does nothing. I do have stuff backed up to my Hotmail skydrive account, and on disc, plus there's nothing vital like tax info or anything on the laptop.

I'm going to take it to a shop this weekend. I suspect the DAZ Studio program I downloaded had something to do with it, but I can't uninstall it if I can't get to the control panel.

Anything else I should do? Should I try turning it on tonight when I get home and see if anything's changed?

[lordlundar]

A hard drive failure is rarely the cause of a program. Odds are it was simply the drive's time to go and the program being installed was a coincidence.

Taking it into a repair place is your best option if you're not tech inclined. They'll back up your drive onto a new one and install it for you. You might have to reinstall some stuff but beyond that there's not much to do.

Do not, above all costs try to turn it on again. The more you try the sooner the drive dies and the less chance of getting anything off of it. Those warnings exist to prevent you from constantly trying to run the drive so it can extend it's life long enough to (hopefully) get as much off of it.

[Geek King]

If you can't get to Safe Mode (tap F8 while the computer is booting), then the best bet is to take the drive out and slave it to another working PC or Laptop and try to transfer whatever you can still get at on the dying drive.

[Moirae]

You're going to need to take it to a tech, It's possible you may not be able to save the drive.

I had a brand new 3 tb drive a couple months ago (built a brand new rig. Beautiful piece of hardware except that drive) that decided it was going to die after only three days. It would beep three times and shut off. My motherboard started telling me that the hard drive didn't even exist.

You may get lucky and the data may still be salvageable but it will require some heavy duty hardware and software to get it off there. I usually don't recommend an outside tech but if you aren't technologically inclined, getting the right programs and stuff are expensive and frustrating.

Either way, you will need a new drive.

[MoonCat]

Yeah, I'm really not very techy, I would have no idea how to replace the drive on my own. I don't have another machine to work with either.

I'll take it in ASAP and see if they can save anything. Been expecting something to go before too long, it's six years old. Why the heck do machines always do this when I'm not actually looking at them?

Thanks for the advice!

[Silent-Hunter]

Why don't they make stuff like they used to? My Commodore 64 still works, and it's 30 years old. I agree, you should have someone take a look at it.

[EricKei]

SH - They call it "Planned Obsolescence." >_< They make 'em cheap because they know people will pay to replace them. Also, at the rate comps tend to become obsolete, a fair number of users -- but certainly not all -- replace the entire rig every few years anyway.

[otakuneko]

Replacing the drive on a laptop can be a piece of cake or an adventure, depending on the design of the laptop. If it's a decent design, there's a panel over the drive compartment and a pull tab on the drive itself. Take out some screws, pull on the tab til the drive disconnects, then slide the new drive in until it fully connects and replace the panel.

[lordlundar]

Replacing the drive on a laptop can be a piece of cake or an adventure, depending on the design of the laptop. If it's a decent design, there's a panel over the drive compartment and a pull tab on the drive itself. Take out some screws, pull on the tab til the drive disconnects, then slide the new drive in until it fully connects and replace the panel.

Then you get to the software side which is a different beast altogether (most laptops have restore partitions which are useless if the drive itself it borked) which is why I suggested taking it to a repair place.

[MoonCat]

Laptop is getting a new hard drive; he had a little trouble getting the old one out at first, then realized it kind of slides to one side and can then be lifted out. One thing I didn't know about this model is that the graphics card is a permanent piece of the hard drive; can't be replaced as a separate thing. Otherwise I would have upgraded that too. Oh well.

He's going to see if he can save my documents and my photos. I forgot to mention the music but most of that's either available to me on my CDs so I can rip it again, or it's on my Amazon and iTunes accounts, so no biggie.

Think I'll probably replace the laptop itself by the end of the year anyway.

[lordlundar]

Most laptops have their video cards integrated. This is done for power efficiency and compactness. Most laptop upgrade capabilities is limited to Hard Drive, RAM, and maybe wireless adapter.

[Ophbalance]

Some of the newer Dell's and HPs can have their CPU's upgraded, if you're lucky. I regret not slapping an i7 dual core into my older Studio 17 when I had it torn down (it's got an i5 in it, but the i7 was an option during configuration time). If I ever feel the need I plan on upgrading my i7 4700 MQ to the 4900 MQ in my HP. However, both are expensive, and probably not worth the cost vs just upgrading the machine in total.

[MoonCat]

I'm back in business (so to speak)! They were able to recover my documents, pics and music, added a couple security things and so far, so good. Only thing I lost that I care about is Character Keeper, a writing tool that I downloaded from a writers' site and forgot to tell them about when I dropped the laptop off. Not a big deal. Oh, and I have to reload Bejeweled - darn it, my 'endless' game score was up to 42,000,000+

[wolfie]

Laptop is getting a new hard drive; he had a little trouble getting the old one out at first, then realized it kind of slides to one side and can then be lifted out. One thing I didn't know about this model is that the graphics card is a permanent piece of the hard drive;

WTF??? I can understand the reasoning for making the graphics card a permanent part of the motherboard in a laptop (space, power,etc.), but why (other than forcing users to buy THEIR hard drives for upgrade/replacement, since anything else would leave you without a usable screen) would a manufacturer put the graphics card on the hard drive?