How fecked an I?

Tenger

Hello all,

I may have lost my laptop.....need advice on what to try. I have a Toshiba P750, got it approx 18 months ago. No issues in that time, loved it.

However over the last 6 weeks it has behaved strangely. On 2 occasions it shut down while I was playing a game, I thought at the time that perhaps the battery had overheated, (on each occasion the back was very hot) It has always been a hot laptop however. Its operation does seem a little slow recently, I put this down to it being too full, and I was in the process of clearing out all the unwanted junk from the memory.

I used it no problem on Sunday evening after work for about 2 hours. I ended up nodding off without shutting it down. So it was on hibernate for approx 6 hours. I awoke yesterday morning to find an onscreen message stating that the Hard Disk required repair or replacement.

I spent about 5 hours yesterday copying documents/pics/music from the PC onto a hard drive to try to save it. I can still access the hard drive but it is painfully slow.

So my question is:
Is it a viable effort to reformat? Or an F8 during boot up?
Or is that message a death knell for the Hard drive?

Secondly, does anyone know a reliable PC repair spot in South West Dublin...ie Tallaght/Templogue? City centre would also be OK, I previously used "Back from the Future" on Aungier St when I lived closer to the city. Would I need a specific Toshiba hard drive or would a generic version be acceptable?


Would love to be able to repair my baby as purchasing a similar spec-ed replacement is financially non-viable at present. (1GB discrete graphics card being my starting point)

Torqay

Probably a SMART warning.

Backup was the right thing to do. You can run some diagnostic tools (UBCD has a whole rake of them). If the HDD is toast, see it as an opportunity to upgrade to a solid state drive.

gouche

As Torqay says it was probably a SMART warning to let you know your HDD was failing.

If you have everything backed up you can replace the drive with any laptop hardrive. Usually come in 2.5" form factor.

SSD would be the way to go if you can afford the premium.
If not, hardrives have come down a lot lately. I picked up a 750GB WD for less than €80 recently.

Torqay

gouche wrote: »

I picked up a 750GB WD for less than €80 recently.

A decent 128 GB SSD goes for 85 yoyos these days.

gouche

Torqay wrote: »

A decent 128 GB SSD goes for 85 yoyos these days.

That's a decent price but you can't argue there's premium to be paid.
This 1TB WD will cost less than €70.

Torqay

Of course... if you compare the costs per gigabyte. But suitable solutions are available at pretty much the same price. Unless you'll have to carry around a vast collection of movies, a TB drive is somewhat of an overkill.

Bottom line, if you need storage, get a HDD. If you want performance and robustness, get a solid state drive.

Tenger

Thanks for the replies folks. Currently creating a recovery media and then going to get myself a new HDD. I see the advantages of the SSD but my games alone would gobble up a lot of that 128GB. So I think I will pick one up on elara.ie......would like to be up and running by Monday. It will be needed for school work next week (pesky kids!) Can I assume any SATA-300 will be OK? Elara have a seagate 1 avail for E86.

I can get a techie mate to help with the installation. Peace of mind has been restored.

Tenger

Hello all,
just want to say thanks very much for the replies. Really eased my mind last week.

I decided to purchase a 1TB HDD from elara.ie. Got it for 87 quid and had it delivered on Friday just gone. Installed it under supervision from a techie mate and now have my baby all back up and running with an additional 500Gb of storage.

I know SSD is 'better' but the price point, size and delivery time of Elara swung it for me.


Great to get the informed and knowledgeable opinion however. perhaps SSD will be my choice at a later (more flush) time.