Author Topic: Hard drive failure?  (Read 11209 times)

ober

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Hard drive failure?
« on: November 12, 2013, 08:51:51 AM »
So I came downstairs this morning and found my wife's computer (my old one) on a black screen saying it could not boot to disk.  The bios does not recognize the HD at all and rebooting does not help.  I fear HD failure but curious if anyone has any other ideas.  When I get home tonight I will try to connect it to my computer and see if the drive is dead or not.  I had no signs of it dying so this is kind of out of left field.  Sucks but I don't think my wife will lose anything except for some downtime.

ober

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Re: Hard drive failure?
« Reply #1 on: November 12, 2013, 11:45:30 AM »
I might just say fuck it and get her a new laptop.  Any suggestions?  I'm looking in the 400-600 range.  Needs to be Windows, but no other major requirements.  Any brands I should avoid?

ober

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Re: Hard drive failure?
« Reply #2 on: November 12, 2013, 12:00:46 PM »
Or just get a new tower.  Hmm...

Betazep

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Re: Hard drive failure?
« Reply #3 on: November 12, 2013, 12:48:19 PM »
I have given up on keeping up.  I usually just get a cheap dell with a warranty these days.  Replace it when it breaks.  The end.

Nevertheless, sorry for your loss.  Sometimes it just sucks to have to replace something that only the day before was working just fine for your purposes.

My main computer in my home office broke.  I resisted the urge to go out and buy a new one right away.  Surprisingly a year has gone by.  I still want a replacement... just don't want to invest the money... and I have more compute than most people need in their lives anyway.
"The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents." -Nathaniel Borenstein

KnuckleBuckett

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Re: Hard drive failure?
« Reply #4 on: November 12, 2013, 12:50:36 PM »
Tower.

You already have the case, media drive, and possibly the power supply.

You will need a mobo, memory, CPU and video solution.

Laptop?  Avoid Toshiba.  Get one with touch and a matte screen.  Read the hell out of reviews.  This is a great time of the year to get one.

Best brands?  Lenovo and Asus.  Shockingly Acer is giving them a run.

When you get closer to a decision yell and we can chew it over.

ober

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Re: Hard drive failure?
« Reply #5 on: November 12, 2013, 01:04:24 PM »
Decision may be made as early as tonight.  I pondered rebuilding what I have... but even getting her mid-range hardware puts me in the 300-400 range and that's re-using the PSU, video card, DVD drive, and case.  And that stuff is 5 years old.  And what if the problem is the PSU?  I'd hate to buy all that stuff and find that to be faulty or have that die in another year.  I think I just need to replace the whole thing.

I think a tower might be the way to go but the laptops are in the same range.  Not that she needs the mobility, but it would be easy to hand that to the kids in a few years.

Decisions.

Oh, and even on top of the hard drive... the internet drops randomly several times a day on that computer so I'm thinking it's either a bad motherboard or something else.  It wasn't a problem when I used it but was an issue since installing Windows 8.  I replaced drivers several times to no avail.  I don't think it's the powerline units either because it happened on the wireless too.

micah

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Re: Hard drive failure?
« Reply #6 on: November 12, 2013, 01:09:30 PM »
Avoid Toshiba.

I have only anecdotal reasoning, but my parents bought a toshiba at BJ's and it was a POS from the day they brought it home.  Slow as f*ck and constantly crashing.  All they do is surf facebook and check e-mail and it couldn't even handle that.  They just bought a surface tablet (like 4 days before the new models came out) and seem to really like it.  Go figure.
« Last Edit: November 13, 2013, 09:24:30 AM by micah »
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KnuckleBuckett

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Re: Hard drive failure?
« Reply #7 on: November 12, 2013, 09:17:11 PM »
Toshiba has the worst support in the industry.

Laptops are awesome for portability and minimizing footprint.

Towers tend to hold up better over time and can generally be tweaked and repaired to help out. 

So typically time versus value towers win it over and over.  The reason is that full sized components are simply more powerful and thus stay valid longer.  They call it having longer legs.  Compare a typical laptop core i7/i5 to that of a full sized version.  The mobile versions are dual core and the full sized versions are quad core.  Though there is the odd mobile quad core i7 that makes for expensive gear.

The tower wins unless you want portable or go with refurb gear.

I say spend a bit more to get her tower up to modern specs and add a video card later if needed.

Check this out...

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KnuckleBuckett

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Re: Hard drive failure?
« Reply #8 on: November 12, 2013, 09:34:24 PM »
Keep the tower she has or use your tower $30.
Keep the media player.
Intel Core i5 CPU with decent integrated 4600 graphics $195.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116942
Hard Drive is up to you as I have no idea what kind of storage she needs $70.
Mobo $64.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132044
PS $50.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139028
Memory $55.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820313353

Not so bad.  You take your time and you will get sales and rebates.

Laptops that don't suck start at $600 even as refurbs.  Lots of great $400 deals but they are sketchy and typically have odd issues like shitty displays, no license keys , non-upgrade-able memory, and on and on.  If you go that way be careful to read reviews from good sources on the exact model and generation of that model.  Laptops have multiple generations within a single model that fix touch pad, monitor, battery, etc issues.  So be very aware of this kind of thing.





ober

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Re: Hard drive failure?
« Reply #10 on: November 13, 2013, 09:27:59 AM »
I think I'm leaning towards just getting the parts and rebuilding.  I think the PS is probably fine and if I go with the other parts you mentioned above, I can do it for around 400.  I might replace the fans in that case too (keeping the one I have).

ober

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Re: Hard drive failure?
« Reply #11 on: November 13, 2013, 11:07:49 AM »
Does anyone know if I will have to jump through hoops to install Windows 8 on a new HD since I already installed and activated it? 

Betazep

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Re: Hard drive failure?
« Reply #12 on: November 13, 2013, 02:09:22 PM »
I assume you are not talking about OEM.

If you own a clown suit, you should consider wearing it.  You will have to call phone activation and explain you are moving from a broken computer.  They probably will give you a new product key.
"The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents." -Nathaniel Borenstein

Betazep

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Re: Hard drive failure?
« Reply #13 on: November 13, 2013, 02:12:52 PM »
Coworker just told me you should get three activations per key.  So you might be good to go.  He also said that when he had to call phone activation, they didn't give him a hard time at all.  It was quick.

So maybe you can leave the clown suit in the closet.  Let me know how it turns out.
« Last Edit: November 13, 2013, 02:22:26 PM by Betazep »
"The most likely way for the world to be destroyed, most experts agree, is by accident. That's where we come in; we're computer professionals. We cause accidents." -Nathaniel Borenstein

ober

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Re: Hard drive failure?
« Reply #14 on: November 13, 2013, 02:25:55 PM »
I have an OEM copy.  Does that make a difference?