posted
My computer's been having some issues lately, slowing down, and after it's been on for a time, coming to a complete hult. Well a couple days ago it came to a head. The computer had crashed again (it never really did until about a month ago). So I restarted, and a screen popped up that told me something to the nature of "Your hardrive is no within operational parameters, press F1 to continue and F2 for Setup". I pressed F1 and the computer started up fine, but then crashed as soon as I tried tot do anything. Well I keep trying, and I'm actually posting this from the computer in question (Dell Latitude D600), but if I do anything with any serious disk usage (even something like playing music with Windows Media Player) it crashes again. And sometimes it crashes anyways, certainly if it's ever on for too long.
If you recall I had an overheating problem a few weeks ago, well I didn't think much of it, but it's been getting worse lately and the main heat problem is right where the HD is so I'm pretty sure it's related.
Anyways, it sounds like I need a new hard disk, but I have a few question for Hatrack before I do this. Ohh, and before I forget, my HD is the standered Dell issue, it's 60GB.
1) Is there anyway to make sure it's the hard disk and only the hard disk. And (he says in a hopeful voice) any chance I can fix it without getting a new one?
2) If I do get a new one, how hard is it to replace on laptop? Really easy or does it require resoldering the motherboard? I admit I've never done anything like this before.
3) Once again, if I do get a new one, would it be difficult to transfer the data from this HD to the other one? If we assume this one is capable of doing so, which it may not be of course. I've recently backed-up most of the data I want and I've tried to get everything off it that I've updated or created sine then, but there's tons of music on here that I've spent years burning on, not to mention the fact that I've undoubtly forgot to back-up certain files, so it'd be really nice if I could transfer instead of having to just loose all this data.
And for anyone wondering, yes, this does mean my Cousin Hobbes programming series will be postponed, since that requires very heavy disk usage plus installing some compiliers.
Ohh, and because of the problems I've downloaded SpyBot, I've had AdAware for a while, and I run Nortan (with LiveUpdate) every single night, as well as using ZoneAlarm firewall. So I really don't think it's spyware or a virus.
posted
Your best bet is to copy everything you want to another computer. Unless you have a magical laptop that can have multiple HDs.
Generally speaking, if its under warrenty, I would call and talk to Dell about it. Emphasizing that you need to keep the data.
Posts: 1621 | Registered: Oct 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
Standard procedure is to format the computer, emphasis on keeping data won't do anything, they won't do it, especially if it is a harddrive problem, if the harddrive is at the end of it's life, there's no way to save it. Burn everything you can to CDs and send it in. Or...hmm... I'm going to assume that you know enough about computers to get them to boot from the CD, get someone else's computer to burn yourself a copy of Knoppix (the Linux live cd) or...hmm...even better if you can make yourself a windows live CD and see if you can get stuff off of there, because it's off the CD the harddrive dying won't stop it from working. Good luck! Satyagraha
Posts: 1986 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
![[Hat]](graemlins/hat.gif)
![[Wall Bash]](graemlins/wallbash.gif)
