Major Problems... Dead Laptop and PC... Recomendations?

[smashedpumpkins]

Alright luck didn't hit me too hot...

I dropped my laptop Thursday off of my desk. Well when I turn it on it displays the start up screen. The screen with the press F1 for Setup Delete.... After that it goes to a black screen. I think it's my hard drive that took the toll here. So I'm going to buy a new one. I currently have a 120GB Sata drive in it. Do you guys think it's the drive? If so I'm going to buy a new one. Where's a good place to buy laptop hard drives? I'd rather find myself a 250gb drive if I can. Any help on this one would be greatly appreciated!

And my PC... Well on a long road trip my PC got damaged. It randomly likes to turn off. Sometimes during the boot up or sometimes 5 minutes later. For the last few months it's run great without issues. Wasn't sure what was up. Well randomly it decided to start again. And then one time it started crackling and the power supply started smoking. Now when I turn it on it sounds like it's on but nothing happens on the monitors. When I look at my 680i board the little digital panel on the mobo that shows like 2 digits just displays dashes. So I was thinking my Power supply and mother board may be dead now. What do you think? If so should I go with the same board and power supply?

Thanks for reading guys... It's been extremely stressful and expensive. Not to mention all the other random unlucky things to happen... But anyways! let me know! Thanks

 

[Lexluethar]

For the laptop it is difficult to say. I would take the easiest route first and pull the hard drive out and re-seat it. See if it maybe got jossiled out a bit. If that doesn't work, then try an extra hard drive if you have one. I say this because you can't be 100% certain it is just the hard drive when the laptop took a fall like that. I'd hate for you to sepnd 60 bucks on a new one and that not fix your problem. Try a friends/extra laptop hard drive first, see if that fixes the issue. If it doesn't you may need to look into getting a new laptop.

As for the desktop, the first symptoms you were describing sounds like the desktop was overheating - possibly from either the power supply fan dying (off again on again symptoms) or a CPU fan. Obviously the second part of your story indicates that your power supply fried - question is did it mess up your mb. Check the manufacteres website to see if there is an error code that matches the one your describing. I believe it is just your power supply.

 

[smashedpumpkins]

Alright I grabbed one of my room mates linux boot up cds. I was able to boot my laptop with no problems using the boot cd. So I'm pretty positive it's the hard drive now. I searched newegg and I noticed all 250GB drives were 5200rpm. My 120GB is 7200rpm. Is it size limited? Otherwise I did see a 160GB 7200RPM drive I could buy. Any recommendations where to buy them?

Alright I know it wasn't overheating. I've got plenty of fans and I even reduced the OC. I'm going to purchase a power supply once again and if the mobo is dead I'll buy a new board too. Should I stick with the same board and PSU?

Thanks for the help!

 

[Lexluethar]

For the laptop it is difficult to say. I would take the easiest route first and pull the hard drive out and re-seat it. See if it maybe got jossiled out a bit. If that doesn't work, then try an extra hard drive if you have one. I say this because you can't be 100% certain it is just the hard drive when the laptop took a fall like that. I'd hate for you to sepnd 60 bucks on a new one and that not fix your problem. Try a friends/extra laptop hard drive first, see if that fixes the issue. If it doesn't you may need to look into getting a new laptop.

As for the desktop, the first symptoms you were describing sounds like the desktop was overheating - possibly from either the power supply fan dying (off again on again symptoms) or a CPU fan. Obviously the second part of your story indicates that your power supply fried - question is did it mess up your mb. Check the manufacteres website to see if there is an error code that matches the one your describing. I believe it is just your power supply.

Guess i'm confused... So you used a boot CD and the CD was able to read your hard drive and was asking to install? Because if that is the case then your hard drive works... know what i mean? Or are you saying you used the bootable CD, and it didn't detect a hard drive? Explain that part a little more for me please.

No RPM is NOT constrained by the size of the drive. And you definately want to get a 7200 rpm drive, not 5400. Your hard drive is the slowest component on your system, and you don't want the system sitting any longer then it needs to waiting for the hard drive.

Newegg.com - Western Digital Scorpio Black WD2500BEKT 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Notebook Hard Drive - Laptop Hard Drives
There is a 250 gig SATA 7200 RPM drive. Laptop drives are bit harder to find at 7200 RPM, the technology is there, but w/ the price being higher anyways people tend to shy away from the 7200 ones b/c they are a lot more expensive (w/ 2.5'').

What i meant by overheats was that were any of the fans being blocked, or had dust or possibly not kicking on. Maybe the heatsink wasn't properly seated on the CPU. Just some ideas.

 

[smashedpumpkins]

Guess i'm confused... So you used a boot CD and the CD was able to read your hard drive and was asking to install? Because if that is the case then your hard drive works... know what i mean? Or are you saying you used the bootable CD, and it didn't detect a hard drive? Explain that part a little more for me please.

No RPM is NOT constrained by the size of the drive. And you definately want to get a 7200 rpm drive, not 5400. Your hard drive is the slowest component on your system, and you don't want the system sitting any longer then it needs to waiting for the hard drive.

Newegg.com - Western Digital Scorpio Black WD2500BEKT 250GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Notebook Hard Drive - Laptop Hard Drives
There is a 250 gig SATA 7200 RPM drive. Laptop drives are bit harder to find at 7200 RPM, the technology is there, but w/ the price being higher anyways people tend to shy away from the 7200 ones b/c they are a lot more expensive (w/ 2.5'').

What i meant by overheats was that were any of the fans being blocked, or had dust or possibly not kicking on. Maybe the heatsink wasn't properly seated on the CPU. Just some ideas.

Hey what I meant was he has a CD that has the linux operating system on the CD. So it boots and uses the 4GB rewritable as the hard drive. So I was able to boot using purely the CD. When I booted the CD it scanned my pc and its specs and loaded up with the CD.

I see what you mean about the drive. Price is a pain, but I'm more for the speed. That drive is basically what I'm looking for. How's that price? Is that a pretty decent deal? I'm not too familiar with laptop parts.

As for the desktop sounds good I'll buy the same PSU and get that working again hopefully!

 

[Lexluethar]

I mean i knew what you meant and what it did, what i'm confused about is how that proves that your problem lies within your harddrive and not another component. If your boot sequence is say DVD/CD ROM then Hard Drive, good hard drive or bad if you have a bootable CD it will go to that first. Try to reseat the hard drive first, if that doesn't work then go the route of purchasing a new drive.

Umm ya that drive is a decent price. But IMO people get rediculously large drive and never use half of it. If you only use 50 gig of space, why pay for 150? That is my motto, i would rather have 50 gig of redundant data on three 50 gig hard drives, then 150 gig of which i'm not using 100 of it. Make sense? If you want to shell out that much for the drive - then yes it is a good price and a manufacterer.

 

[smashedpumpkins]

I mean i knew what you meant and what it did, what i'm confused about is how that proves that your problem lies within your harddrive and not another component. If your boot sequence is say DVD/CD ROM then Hard Drive, good hard drive or bad if you have a bootable CD it will go to that first. Try to reseat the hard drive first, if that doesn't work then go the route of purchasing a new drive.

Umm ya that drive is a decent price. But IMO people get rediculously large drive and never use half of it. If you only use 50 gig of space, why pay for 150? That is my motto, i would rather have 50 gig of redundant data on three 50 gig hard drives, then 150 gig of which i'm not using 100 of it. Make sense? If you want to shell out that much for the drive - then yes it is a good price and a manufacterer.

True, yeah I took the hard drive out and even took it apart. But I can't seem to find anything obvious problems. I've taken the entire laptop apart before to fix it. Everything is in there tight so I'm sure it's a hard drive problem. Yeah I have it set to boot from DVD first then hard drive. When I boot from the hard drive it obviously doesn't work. I'll go ahead and look around but I think I may get this drive if I don't find anything better.

As for the size I have a 120GB drive right now and it's full to the last few gigs. I keep having to delete aps etc... So 120 wasn't working for me. Of course that was because of my movie collection. I have a 500GB external drive, but I like to have them on my laptop too for easy portability.

Thanks for the help Lex!

 

[smashedpumpkins]

Alright I bought the 250GB Hard Drive and another Corsair 620w PSU. I'll update this with some more questions when I can. Any opinions on the Mobo let me know!