Advice and help please

fade2black

Something about this time of the year and my laptop getting depressed and killing itself....

Anyway, my 1.4 year old laptop is crying out in some pain. It takes a while to come on and the hard drive makes quite the painful noise as it does so. I know what's around the corner but I'd love to do something to either prevent it or maybe put it off for a while.

I defragged the drive yesterday (took about 16 hours) and now I'm in the process of removing some big files in order to ease a bit of pressure on it. Is there anything else I can do? Any advice you can give me for this probably all too common problem.

kippy

To be honest, the defrag, while it may take a bit of pressure off the drive in the long run, will have put it under a savage amount of pressure for that 16 hours.
I would make sure everything is well backed up, have a new laptop harddrive purchased and ready to install when that one gives up.
Theres not much you can do to prolong its' life unless you dont use it at all.

Kippy

Ghost Train

yep your hard drive is dieing

youre lucky it didn't fail completely as you might be able to back up some files

Ruu_Old

Don't think there is a whole lot you can do, make sure to backup as suggested. You could try and keep it as cool as possible when using it, like have the laptop raised a little bit off the surface to allow the air flow. I can't think of much else strenuous for the hard drive apart from the Indexing Service (used if you search for files using the Windows search feature), it can be turned off if you don't use it. Right click on C: in My Computer, then Properties and then untick 'Allow Indexing Service....'

fade2black

Thanks guys.