Mystery noises and BSOD on my newish Acer Aspire One netbook. Am I screwed? [more inside]
posted by tealsocks on Nov 18, 2009 - 2 answers

Is my iBook G4 dying? [more inside]
posted by Brachiosaurus on Apr 2, 2009 - 7 answers

I have a Samsung R70 laptop. I need more hard-drive space. How easy is it going to be for a layperson to upgrade it themselves? [more inside]
posted by mippy on Feb 26, 2009 - 4 answers

How do I get Windows XP to detect a new hard drive in my laptop? [more inside]
posted by mahoganyslide on Feb 7, 2009 - 4 answers

I have a 5400rpm SATA 3.0Gb/s & 7200rpm SATA 1.5Gb/s drive. Wondering which one to put in a laptop (which one would give better performance, if noticeable). Thanks! [more inside]
posted by Upal on Jan 5, 2009 - 13 answers

How do I recover a 320GB drive that only reads 110GB now? Similar to this [more inside]
posted by WilliamWallace on Nov 26, 2008 - 15 answers

Should I revive my Titanium Mac Powerbook? [more inside]
posted by blapst on Sep 14, 2008 - 11 answers

I have an ancient Thinkpad 570, and the hard drive finally died. Hardware not recognized. I've pulled out the old one (it rattles ominously) and am wondering if I can replace it with a new generic laptop drive, rather than having to go with overpriced proprietary stuff. [more inside]
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken on Jul 31, 2008 - 10 answers

What to do with a spare laptop hard drive...please help [more inside]
posted by TeachTheDead on Jul 24, 2008 - 13 answers

My XP Home running laptop hard drive has started making clicking and grinding sounds. Previous questions cover cloning the hard drive. This is more desirable than reinstalling everything or just backing up My Documents and Settings. Is it possible to create a clone or an image or something that is stored on my home server indefinitely, so that once my hard drive does die I can use it to recreate the current settings on a new drive?
posted by billtron on Jun 14, 2008 - 8 answers

I need a new hard drive for my laptop. Best place to shop? [more inside]
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit on May 28, 2008 - 20 answers

Question about laptop hard drives: "Plug-in module"? [more inside]
posted by dondiego87 on May 12, 2008 - 5 answers

Can this laptop be saved? All was good. Then it sounded like there was a part loose and rolling around inside my laptop for a few seconds. The hard drive started running slooowwwly with some additional crunching and grinding noises. On reboot I got an I/0 error then a no bootable drive error. [more inside]
posted by 26.2 on Mar 14, 2008 - 8 answers

What's the best way to erase my hard drive for resale if I don't have original OS reinstall CDs to work with? [more inside]
posted by rhoticity on Feb 29, 2008 - 13 answers

I have a very old laptop whose 3 GB (!) hard drive died. Can I put a fresh new 100 GB hard drive in there or should I replace with the exact model I took out? Details inside. [more inside]
posted by crapmatic on Jan 7, 2008 - 6 answers

What is the easiest way to make a bit-perfect copy of a potentially failing laptop hard drive? The copy target would be a new 2.5" drive that I'd then install in the same laptop. [more inside]
posted by killdevil on Aug 11, 2007 - 37 answers

What kind of a converter do I need to backup my laptop hard drive? [more inside]
posted by Pontius Pilate on Jun 3, 2007 - 6 answers

Am I killing my laptop by holding it sideways (like a book)? [more inside]
posted by Rock Steady on May 25, 2007 - 12 answers

Can I make my backup drive bootable without having to wipe it clean and start over from scratch? [more inside]
posted by umbú on May 9, 2007 - 5 answers

I just got a macbook pro with a 120 gig hard drive. I only have 93 gigs available, what gives? [more inside]
posted by nimkip on Jan 23, 2007 - 18 answers

Shopping for a cheap used laptop: What are the minimum specs I should be looking for with respect to CPU, RAM, HD? I'm planning to use WinXP (maybe I'll settle for 2K), Open Office, and FireFox (including some AJAX-heavy web sites such as gmail, Google Docs, del.icio.us), with a wifi card. And not much else. I want to avoid "I'm always waiting for this stupid slow computer!" but not spend much more than the minimum needed to avoid that.
posted by Leonard of Vince on Dec 18, 2006 - 24 answers

Could turning on hard drive compression actually speed up access on my laptop? [more inside]
posted by Ookseer on Nov 25, 2006 - 10 answers

Dropped my laptop (IBM Thinkpad T42) from about 3 feet. It seemed ok for a week except that it randomly rebooted from time to time. However now it says it can't even load the operating system. I don't have a recovery disk. I don't have the original XP CD. I can't send this to a repairman because I have very sensitive information stored in files on the desktop. How sunk am I? [more inside]
posted by zaebiz on Nov 24, 2006 - 19 answers

My 12" Powerbook G4's hard drive has gone belly up. Help me figure out my options. [more inside]
posted by maxreax on Jul 25, 2006 - 10 answers

I'm looking to buy a new Macbook as a secondary computer, however, I want it to be the sole host to my 60gb iPod. I currently have a Toshiba laptop, which has an 80BG hard drive. After two years of use, I've realized I need at least a 120 GB hard drive in any new laptop I get. I don't want to shell out the cash for Apple to throw an upgraded drive in ($250!!!!), but instead I want to buy a new hard drive off ebay or something and replace the 80GB one inside the fresh Macbook. Since I'm only accustomed to the Windows OS -- How do I go about doing this for an Apple computer? Also, does anyone know where I can get a good deal on a laptop drive? :) [more inside]
posted by drkrdglo on May 30, 2006 - 29 answers

My hard drive might be on the brink of failure. [more inside]
posted by matkline on Mar 16, 2006 - 7 answers

Winxp laptop: Blue screen, unrequested reboots and mysterious problems. Please help me connect the dots and figure out what's wrong with my computer. [more inside]
posted by miniape on Feb 5, 2006 - 6 answers

My laptop has been everywhere and has proved to be very tough. Nonetheless, I think my hard drive may have died. Help me decipher this error message... [+] [more inside]
posted by moonbird on Dec 28, 2005 - 12 answers

I popped in a Win2000 disk into my Toshiba laptop (600 Mhz Celeron Satellite). Proceeded to reformat into FAT32 and it claimed that the disk has errors and refuses to format. No information lost but I've been looking at harddrives and they're priced at $65 and higher. Specs for the replacement harddrive are [2.5 inch - ATA-100 - 44 pin IDC - 4200 rpm - buffer: 8 MB]. I don't want to pay that kind of money for a relatively worthless computer. What can I do? Thanks in advance.
posted by SeizeTheDay on Aug 8, 2005 - 3 answers

Help me recover data off a (seemingly) dead laptop hard drive. [more inside]
posted by killdevil on Aug 2, 2005 - 5 answers

My girlfriend has a fairly new Dell laptop that has suddenly developed a few problems. [more inside]
posted by tomorama on Apr 24, 2005 - 12 answers

I am going crazy about this, and google won't turn up anything useful. Laptop with no CDrom or floppy: Took HD out and installed XP using my desktop. Freezes loading mup.sys. I already installed the MB swap patch.

Basically what I am asking is: Can you copy the entire XP Pro CD onto your Hard drive, and set it as a boot option? Can it work? Does anyone have any ideas?
posted by Keyser Soze on Jul 22, 2004 - 5 answers

Does anyone have experience using a Hitachi Travelstar 7K60 in a 1.25GHz Aluminum Powerbook? Advice to share about installation, heat issues, battery life?
posted by Dean King on Mar 26, 2004 - 5 answers