Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with laptop and harddrive

Mystery noises and BSOD on my newish Acer Aspire One netbook. Am I screwed?

tealsocks — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:47:12 -0800

Mystery noises and BSOD on my newish Acer Aspire One netbook. Am I screwed? I bought an 11.6" Aspire One at Staples about a month and a half ago, and the night before last it started making a clicking sound followed by a beep which I can only assume is coming from the hard drive. Sometimes this sound is followed by a blue screen of death and sometimes i can just pick the computer up and it goes away. Is this the sound of a hard drive failing? I carry my netbook around a lot, but it's always in a padded laptop bag so I'm pretty sure I haven't damaged it in any way. Do I need to get a replacement?

My computer is having some difficulties.

Brachiosaurus — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:16:26 -0800

Is my iBook G4 dying? The most pressing problem is that, while working on it, without the power cord, the computer will abruptly turn off, with no warning. It can even be when the battery indicator on the top of the screen isn't even that low, maybe a quarter left. Afterwards I can just plug it in and turn it back on with no problems. This is happening more and more regularly.

The next biggest problem is that the front (closest to me) left corner gets super hot sometimes. I'm guessing that this is hard drive. I've backed up my data recently but I should probably again- maybe right after I'm done typing this.

Also, the wires within the power adapter may be starting to fray. It isn't too touchy but to keep the indicator light illuminated I have to keep it still. Also the box thingy that goes to the wall will get really, really hot while it's charging- but not if it's just plugged in. I don't know if it's always done this.

The only other problem is that four keys no longer work on the keyboard thanks to my cat spilling a martini on the computer about 2 years ago. I should have replaced it then because I can do it myself and I've heard that the replacement keyboard would only be about 50$. All of the letters still work (though I imagine that it would be funny if I had to avoid words with certain letters) and only one of the keys that I tend to use has been effected. I called Apple to ask them once but they said they don't sell just the keyboard.

So I'm looking at about 300 in replacement parts (outside of the hot hard drive problem, 'cause I don't know what that's about) and I'm thinking that even if I repair these and the thing lasts 8 months my utility per dollar wouldn't improve that much because I'm spending 20% of the cost to get another ~15% of life from it.

I choose 8 months because it would be awesome if I could get this thing to last until I finish school in Dec.

So it sounds like I should just replace it but I don't think I'd be able to swing that for another 2 or so months and I kind of need it (what I mean by need is that my roommate lets me use his spiffy iMac but having a laptop [and my own computer] improves my productivity).

So I guess my questions are, can this thing last 2-3 months without putting money into it? 8+ months without repairs? 8+ month with the repairs listed above? And how much would a new 100gb HD cost? Has anyone had this battery problem before? I know that none of you can predict the future but I just need some reasonable advice.

Technologic Irrigation

mippy — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 04:43:49 -0800

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? My drive is currently 100gb, split between drives C and D. From memory, these are two separate drives rather than a single partitioned drive. I want to upgrade my D drive to a greater capacity, as C is for programs and D is for music - it would be much easier for me to have all my music on the computer (rather than an external drive) in terms of using iTunes etc.

The hard drive is accessed through a door in the bottom, removable with a screwdriver, and is attached to the machine with a plug-in slot. I upgraded my RAM without problems, but am just wondering whether there's more to doing a hard drive?

Hard Drive Woes

mahoganyslide — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 16:55:56 -0800

How do I get Windows XP to detect a new hard drive in my laptop? I have a HP DV1000 laptop. After a catastrophic hard drive crash, I bought a new 320GB hard drive off of NewEgg (seen here). Once I stick in the Windows XP install CD, it doesn't detect the new hard drive. I get the following error message:

"Setup did not find any hard disk drives installed in your computer. Make sure any hard disk drives are powered on and properly connected to your computer, and that any disk-related hardware configuration is correct. This may involve running a manufacturer-supplied diagnostic or setup program. Setup cannot continue. To quick Setup press F3."

I went to the HP website and saw that the DV1000 takes ATA-5 hard drives. The one I bought was a SATA 3.0gbps 5400 rpm. Are the two not compatible at all?

Fdisk sees the hard drive and can format it to FAT32. Why can't Windows see it?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Which is faster? The hare on nyquil or the tortise on crank?

Upal — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 14:26:23 -0800

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! The laptop will be used for 1) listening to music 2) running code and processing thousands of data files 3) the occasional photo edit.

Where did my other 200 GB go?

WilliamWallace — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 09:25:49 -0800

How do I recover a 320GB drive that only reads 110GB now? Similar to this This is my first time posting a question here on MeFi, so I apologize for any formatting mistakes.

I bought a 320GB Seagate 2.5" SATA HDD to upgrade my laptop storage. I got a cheap enclosure to clone my existing HDD so I could just swap the drives out. But it seems that when I cloned the drive using Acronis TrueImage, it cloned the 110GB (from the 120GB drive) to the new drive and now the drive is only recognized as 110GB. I tried a low level formatting tool to no avail. Can someone help me or direct me to somewhere where I can recover the storage on this drive, and suggest how I can avoid this problem in the future? I googled it and it seems to be an issue with something called LDA, and how it should be 48-bit to recognize drives over 137.5 GB, but I'm not sure what that means and the explanations on how to fix it were less than helpful.

Additional Information:

I told Acronis to automatically upscale my partitions, which may be one of the causes of the issue. There is an 80GB partition and a 30GB partition on the drive currently.

If it helps: the laptop is a Dell Inspiron 9400 with 2GB RAM and running XP.

UnDead Powerbook - Good or Evil?

blapst — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 13:12:18 -0800

Should I revive my Titanium Mac Powerbook? My laptop's hard drive just ate itself. The fine people at NYC's Tekserve can replace the hard drive for $250 or thereabouts. However, it's an old laptop, (I think it was the 2nd generation Titanium powerbook), now considered vintage, and so replacement parts are no longer made, and I was told that if I encounter any further problems with this machine, they likely cannot be fixed. Furthermore, the battery likes to fall out, so it usually needs to be plugged in to a wall.

I just got a new desktop recently, so there's a bit of a sting at the thought of buying a new laptop, too. But $250 seems like a lot for something that might not last long.

I would use the laptop mainly for word processing, internetting, and perhaps a little music sequencing (reason), either when I travel (which is at least once every month or two), or when the desktop is in use by my wife.

So, do i spend the $250 to revive this heavy clunker or not?

Can I replace my dead old Thinkpad HDD with a generic one?

stavrosthewonderchicken — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 06:18:07 -0800

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. The laptop model number is 2644 3AA, and the HDD model is DBCA-206480 E182115 T, if that makes a difference. I've been building computers for years, but this is my first go with laptop repair.

Thanks!

Here a Drive, there a Drive...

TeachTheDead — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:35:08 -0800

What to do with a spare laptop hard drive...please help At my last job, our company gave away a bunch of laptops since they were older and I love mine still (after a year, the laptop is a Panasonic Toughbook and is a few years older).
I was given 2 removable Hard drive with it.
On one I have Vista and I use it every day, the other I installed Unbuntu and I dont see the point...knowing how to use it won't get me a job or even let me do any thing "cool".
So I have a spare Hard Drive, what can I do with it? I have been pondering this question for several months and I still can't pin it down.

Since the computer is older its just not prime for games, and furthermore, I dont play too many as it is....
Any ideas friends?

Clone hard drive for future use

billtron — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 06:47:40 -0800

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?

Where's the best place online to shop for a hard drive?

Guy_Inamonkeysuit — Wed, 28 May 2008 09:43:15 -0800

I need a new hard drive for my laptop. Best place to shop? In this thread - http://ask.metafilter.com/91894/Something-is-killing-my-FTP - I discussed my computer woes. After taking off to nuke from orbit, it's clear that either my restore CDs are corrupted, or my hard drive is hosed. I'm ordering a new recovery CD from Gateway, but I'm also going to get myself a new hard drive. But it's a jungle out there -- what's the best place to score a new drive? My machine is a Gateway 7330 GZ laptop, with an 80-gig drive running 4200 RPM. Do I do Tiger Direct? Or what? Thanks in advance!

Question module

dondiego87 — Mon, 12 May 2008 08:59:40 -0800

Question about laptop hard drives: "Plug-in module"? I'm looking to double the HD capacity on my Macbook, from 80 GB to 160. Looking at the Western Digital Scorpio 160GB SATA drives on Buy.com, I see that there are two versions. One goes for $115 while the other, which is branded as a "plug-in module," goes for $80. Obviously, I'd like the cheaper one. What does "plug-in module" mean, both theoretically (what's the difference, if any) and practically (can I install it in my Macbook or not)?

Thanks!

Grind, Grind, Grind goes the Hard Drive

26.2 — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 09:38:27 -0800

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. This is a spare l laptop that I keep for friends to use when they hang out at my house. It's a 4 year old Dell Latitude 600 running Windows 2000. Also, it's been used hard. It was dropped a few weeks ago and I had to open up the machine to reseat the some of the connections to the PCMCIA card to make the wireless work. I wish I could tell you that's the first time this laptop was dropped.

Files are all backed up on my external hard drive, but not the operating system or applications.

Can it be saved and is it worth the bother?

Clean me up, Scotty!

rhoticity — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 13:47:51 -0800

What's the best way to erase my hard drive for resale if I don't have original OS reinstall CDs to work with? I have a 1.5 year old Dell laptop running Windows XP SP2 which I'm selling in the next couple of weeks (getting a Macbook... YESSSS). I'm going to make an attempt to sell it here on campus or through Craigslist before I try other methods, and so as soon as I transfer everything I want to keep over to my new computer, I want to clean the hard drive off as well as I can. The problem is that, in a misguided money-saving attempt when I first ordered the Dell, I did not request physical Windows XP reinstall CDs. Obviously I cannot just completely reformat the hard drive, then, since I will have no way of reinstalling the OS.. right? What do I do to get this thing ready to sell to a stranger?

For the record, there's nothing terribly "sensitive" on here, just personal/academic documents and photos, but I'd rather get it as clean as possible just in case some total weirdo gets a hold of it.

Any other tips on dealing with the less-than-stellar electronics resale market would also be appreciated.

Picking out a hard drive

crapmatic — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 12:15:57 -0800

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. The laptop is a 1999-vintage Fujitsu LifeBook E335 that I've been using for menial, specialized tasks. The original factory hard drive, a Fujitsu MHD2032AT 3GB hard drive, finally kicked the bucket over the weekend.

Should I be safe and buy another MHD2032AT from a reseller, or is there a reasonable chance that there's a 50-100 GB hard drive somewhere that will work in this laptop? I'm concerned about BIOS incompatibility issues, a thing that I saw last year when trying to put a 50 GB WD drive in a 2000-model Compaq workstation that balked at anything over 20 GB. Furthermore I don't even know what kind of connector I'm shopping for... will anything listed as "ATA-33" work?

Clone a laptop drive

killdevil — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 10:05:31 -0800

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. I'd like to clone my laptop hard drive onto a replacement drive. The copy target would be a new laptop drive. Whatever mechanism I use to copy data would ideally a) not be derailed by bit errors (the current drive IS failing, after all) and b) be able to enumerate which files are corrupt, if any.

I'm running Windows XP, but would be willing to boot into a Linux CD distribution, etc... I'm a pretty sophisticated user, just not an I.T. guy with copies of Ghost lying around (and don't recommend Norton Ghost, please; it's over-complicated and I hate it).

What kind of a converter do I need to backup my laptop hard drive?

Pontius Pilate — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 20:36:20 -0800

What kind of a converter do I need to backup my laptop hard drive? My HP Pavilion dv4000 has officially been rendered inoperable (looks like the VGA adapter is not working). I need to back up all my files before I send it in to be repaired, and I've heard about converters that allow you to connect a notebook hard drive to a desktop computer via USB. However, after looking at the different models of converters, I am really confused - do I need a 2.5-inch or a 3.5-inch bay? How do I make sure that I get a notebook-to-USB converter and not some IE model?

Any help would be appreciated!

(Oh, and may as well throw this in - is there any way to output my laptop to a desktop monitor if the VGA adapter is not working? The laptop itself seems to go through the boot-up process okay - it's just that the screen remains black.)

Am I killing my laptop by holding it sideways?

Rock Steady — Fri, 25 May 2007 16:21:09 -0800

Am I killing my laptop by holding it sideways (like a book)? I have found I greatly prefer reading long pieces of text on my laptop by rotating the screen 90 degrees and holding the laptop sideways like a book -- with the keyboard and touchpad as the left-hand "page" and the screen on the right. Does this pose any problems for the long-term health of my lappy? I'm particularly thinking about the hard drive -- is it designed to only be operated in a horizontal position? Any other problems I'm not thinking of?

It is an Acer Aspire 5100 running Vista, if that matters.

How do I grant my hard drive permission to boot up?

umbú — Wed, 09 May 2007 13:39:05 -0800

Can I make my backup drive bootable without having to wipe it clean and start over from scratch? I just backed up my Powerbook G4's entire internal hard drive to an external firewire hard drive using Prosoft Data Backup 3. The software claims to make bootable clones. However, when I try to boot from the external hard drive, the computer gets hung up and never comes out of it. If I boot the computer up normally, the external drive mounts without a problem, and all of the files that I've tested seem to work fine.

Is there a way to make the external hard drive bootable using Carbon Copy Cloner or Superduper! (or some other software that I don't know about), without completely reformatting the drive and starting over?

Where has my hard drive space gone?

nimkip — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 21:59:14 -0800

I just got a macbook pro with a 120 gig hard drive. I only have 93 gigs available, what gives? To clarify, the only thing I've installed is mouse drivers, and the only things I've downloaded are a few updates (itunes, pages, security etc). I know that OS X and the preinstalled software takes up a chunk of space, but 27 gigs? Is that right, or could I have a problem with my laptop?

Laptop on the cheap. What are the minimum specs?

Leonard of Vince — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 13:30:29 -0800

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.

Could turning on disk compression actually speed up disk access?

Ookseer — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 01:27:56 -0800

Could turning on hard drive compression actually speed up access on my laptop? I have an ultraportable laptop. It's got a decent processor and enough ram, but it has one of those tiny 80GB Toshiba iPod hard drives in it and the speed, both access and transfer is awful. (Plenty good for an iPod, horrible for real computing.)

I run a few applications that access the hard drive quite a bit, either loading or writing a decent amount of data. When I look at the task manager, my HD light is on solid while my CPU usage is around 15%. I'd, of course, love to speed up access.

So my thinking goes like this: If I click the "Compress drive to save disk space" it will put a little more data in every sector, so each seek and read should be a little more efficient. Since my CPU is near idle anyway it could use those extra cycles to process the compression.

So the question: Is this assumption true?
Are there other drawbacks to compressed NTFS volumes? (Like being more likely to go corrupt, harder to recover corrupted files, fragmentation, etc?)

(And I'll throw in an extra related Q: Is there a way to tell Windows XP Pro to try to fill up more real ram before it start paging?)

"Error loading operating system" after laptop fall

zaebiz — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 01:37:28 -0800

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? The error message given is "Error loading operating system". It appeared to happen after running Evidence Eliminator but I'm not sure if this problem is related to that. It had been running XP.

When it first happened I vaguely remember a blue screen flashing up which gave a whole lot of information and mentioned a .SYS file which I think started with N, possibly NTFS.SYS. It did not give me enough time to read the message before it gave the operating system error message.

My Hard Drive Crashed. What now?

maxreax — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 08:57:17 -0800

My 12" Powerbook G4's hard drive has gone belly up. Help me figure out my options. My hard drive crashed in a serious, unfuckwitable way mid-day yesterday. After exhausting my own technical know-how, I took it to the Apple Store, who told me (basically) that it's unrecoverable due to hardware damage (it makes a reallllly scary spraypaint-can clicking noise when turned on). I attempted to target boot it to my girlfriend's computer (from where I am writing this question), but it won't mount. This, it seems to me, is a v. bad thing. So: I would like to know what, exactly, my options are.

1) a) Obviously, I need to get my hard drive replaced. I would do this myself, but I've heard that the 12" Powerbooks are difficult to pry open (and instruction manuals I found online back this up). Is this true? Is there anyone who's done it? If I decide that I don't feel comfortable doing it, can anyone recommend a Los Angeles-area Mac service store that will do it quickly, well and cheaply?

b) Should I just spring for a new computer? My Powerbook's not in great shape--sticky keyboard, dead line of pixels on the screen, bumps and dents all over. What's the lifespan for the rest of the hardware parts on these machines, and if I do replace the hard drive, how much longer am I looking at? Am I better off just buying a new Macbook?

2) a) At this point, how likely is non-heavy-duty data recovery? From what I can tell, most places recommend (if the drive wont mount in the computer itself) removing it and placing it in a firewire enclosure, and trying to get it to mount from there. Is this something that I could do? (I suppose this is a similar question to 1a). When I attempted to target-boot the laptop, wasn't I basically doing the same thing--and if it doesn't show up then, am I basically fucked? Is there a store that would do this for me (if it's even worth doing), and how much would they charge/would they charge if it ended up not working?

b) Assuming that I will never be able to mount my hard drive again, is there a Los Angeles-area data recovery service that will do it for fairly cheaply (I understand that in this case that might mean something like $500), or is that just wishful thinking? Considering that the hard drive is making the bad noise and I've tried to turn it on several times, I'm worried that I've damaged it even further. What's the likelihood of that, and how much will that affect other people's attempts to fix it?

Help me upgrade my Macbook's hard drive

drkrdglo — Tue, 30 May 2006 20:14:20 -0800

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? :) Other than cloning a drive on OS X, as I understand it I will need a 2.5" SATA drive for the Macbook. Are all laptop drives SATA?

Your help is greatly appreciated!