Computer Not working-Can you help?

[CaucasianAsian29]

Wow-
Thanks for all the great advice. I tried using the disks that came with the computer, but the same blue screen came up and the comp died. I'm pretty sure my hard drive died on me, and am not sure of my next step.

What I did find out after researching is the short life that laptop hard drives have. It seems that most last about 4 years, but may die even sooner. I am going to buy an external hard drive to back everything up on for the future.
Does anyone know about the hard drive life of a desktop compared to a laptop?
Thanks for all the help

[LuckyTxGuy]

As for your next step, I would follow what I outlined above and in the post I linked to. It seems pretty obvious now that your HD has died or almost died. The problem that most people don't seem to understand is that with every single revolution a dying hard drive makes, it is one revolution closer to being dead. It might last for a week or for 1 minutes. No one knows. That is why I stress pulling the drive and attempting a backup (or paying someone else if need be) before trying anything else. I've been down this road before and I've actually lost every single piece of data on a hard drive by trying to use the recovery CD's, when I didn't realize the real problem was with the drive itself. I'm definitely not blaming you or anyone else for your HD failure, but after my experiences I've just become obsessive about backing up the data as soon as possible, just in case.

So where do you go now? You need to assess how important the data on the drive is. You have 4 basic options...

1) Buy software ($100+) and attempt to recover the data yourself. Not a great option.
2) Take it to a local computer repair shop and let them give it a try. A decent option but if the drive has truly failed, they likely can't help.
3) Send it off to a data recovery expert business and they will likely recover all your data but expect to spend a bare minimum of $300-$500, with thousands more likely.
4) Forget about the data, call it a loss and chalk it up to a learning experience and backup, backup, backup on a regular basis from now on. That is the route most people take.

I know this isn't just a load of help but it's your basic options.

Good luck.

-Jason

[CaucasianAsian29]

[ QUOTE ]

4) Forget about the data, call it a loss and chalk it up to a learning experience and backup, backup, backup on a regular basis from now on. That is the route most people take.



[/ QUOTE ]

Jason-your reply's are awesome and helped me very much! unfortunately I'm going to have to go w/ option 4, My Girlfriends parents work for MAC and they told me I could use their 30% off discount.

I will remember "back up, back up, back up"

[LuckyTxGuy]

CA29, I'm a PC guy but I'd love to have a Mac and with the new option of running Windows on a Mac, the idea is even more tempting. However, I don't want to spend the $$ on a Mac right now, but since you can get 30% off.....heck I'd jump on it if I were you too. Let us know how you like the Mac.

Glad I could help. I really enjoy helping people with their problems and I sometimes over explain things and give too much information, but I'm just trying to give people the info that I would like to receive if I was the one asking the question.

Good luck

-Jason

[CaucasianAsian29]

Okay, One last thing i'm wondering,
Would it be worth it to put a new hard drive in this computer?
How much $ would I be looking at? Even if I do this I still think i'm gonna buy a mac

[Dotti]

A colleague had a similar error and I managed to get his data back using the following:

If you have the XP installation disk
1) set the laptop to boot from cd
2) boot up from the installation disk
3) you should get a prompt that asks if you want to go to the recovery console to press r. Load the recovery console
4) at the command prompt enter: chkdsk /P (it might be chkdsk /R)
5) after running the chkdsk exit the console, remove the cd and reboot the pc
6) if you can then load windows make a backup of the data.

Its probably best to get a new hard drive, but you can keep going for a while but expect to see the blue screen again.

[Suigin406]

referring to what u said before OP, laptop hard drives aren't terribly priced online, u can get them for around 80-110...but yea, they won't last too long, few years...as for an external HD, they won't do a whole lot better...it depends on if u use them just for backup or if u use them constantly...if it's the latter, they go 2-3 years, but if it's sparingly, more like 4-5 years...that being said, i like to get a new HD every year or so, so I can constantly shift data onto the new one...backup backup backup...keep doing it...