Refurb Laptop or Netbook

[BlackStar]

Thanks everyone,

I feel a lot more empowered to upgrade my hard drive by myself after all of your comments and support. I think I may have found the right memory and hard drives too.

The only thing I am a little worried about now is how to restore my system after I add the new hard drive. I am currently researching how to backup my existing hard drive but was curious as to whether this option is preferable to reinstalling Windows and everything else I had on my computer from scratch? I have all of my files backed up on a USB drive either way, but not necessarily the programs.

Oh and by the way, my laptop isn't dead yet. I just get a message everytime I start it up stating the following and I have to press F1 to bypass it so I just assumed I had better do something before it fully failed.

"1720 - SMART Hard Drive detects imminent failure (Failing Attr: 05)"

Probably a longshot but if anyone can veryify exactly what that means I would appreciate it. I am still probably going to go ahead with the upgrades though.

Thanks again everyone!

 

[JoshSB]

I work as a tech in a computer repair shop and it would be MAX of $200 for those repairs. Maybe $250 depending on if the HDD is a pain to put in.

SMART is a system that checks for issues with the speed of the spinning. If SMART is being triggered, well then most likely the HDD is failing and will be gone before to long.

Make sure you back up all of your data on the HDD.

 

[ricanflow]

Everything can be done for less than $100....the ram is ddr since the cpu is a pentium m.

 

[bd2988]

You're best bet would be to just get documents, and important files off of the hard drive. Make a folder on your desktop called backup, and place your files into it. Then, burn a cd, or use a usb flash drive to place the folder on. Take an inventory of the programs you have installed, most of it is probably bloatware, and just reinstall them after you install your OS. You'd be better off with a fresh install of everything anyway, four years worth of modifying the registry, with broken file locations etc., will make your computer slower anyhow.

 

[Harper]

Back up the following folders
C:\Documents and Settings\name\Desktop
C:\Documents and Settings\name\Docuemtns
C:\Documents and Settings\name\Favorites
C:\swsetup\

Export your email and back up any thing else that migth be important.

 

[BlackStar]

Quick Update!

Thanks again for all of your help guys!

I was finally able to replace my Hard Drive on my own and so far, there aren't any issues. I found a way to re-create a Windows install CD from my dying Hard Drive and install it on the new Drive. Now all I have to do is finish installing the drivers and reinstall my programs. Most of my documents were manually backed up on an external drive so I am okay there but I did make an image of Hard Drive as soon as it started dying on me just in case so if I missed something I think I can always revert back to that. I don't think I will though because of the unnecessary programs that were on it. It's amazing how fast it boots up now.

Thanks again for all of your help and i'll report back as I progress along.