My laptop crashed!

I got a Toshiba laptop in the summer. I thought it would work fine, and, I thought it was good and all.

Little did I know and all, that, it was exactly NOT good. My laptop broke down this weekend and I was forced to have to buy a new laptop for school and the remainder of college this weekend. I had to chip about $1200 for a Sony Vaio out of my savings.



I am SO MAD RIGHT NOW. I had all of my important things in my laptop... well not everything but like I had a lot of my writings in my laptop, I had all of my cool drawings that I drew in my other laptop, I had all of the cool things in my other laptop. I mean the laptop that I have now is kind of cool but I miss my old laptop. I wish it never broke down.

Now I have a Sony Vaio FW seeries notebook, it has 320 gigs which is nice... but I miss my old laptop...

:9

Share your laptop crashed stories please. I am experiencing pain right now. So... yes....

[edit on 15-2-2009 by Frankidealist35]

It must have been REALLY broken for you to lash out on a new one.

Why didn't you simply remove the hard drive and hook it up to another PC to access your files?

When laptops go under it's usually because of the Motherboard, not the hard drive. Mobos are really fragile in most laptops.

Save your HD. You can get a HD enclosure for about $30 bucks. Make sure you get the right size.

PS - 2-4 gig USB key drives are really cheap. Everyone should back up their data files onto those. (i.e. txt, doc, xls, rtf, jpg)

[edit on 16/2/2009 by Syandos]

You're files might still be available from the old Hard Drive.

Take it to a shop and see if they can help.

Frankidealist...

I do sympathise....I had a Toshiba laptop too, that I had for about 5 years. That turns out on it's own to be a minor miracle, and it was used A LOT! let me tell ya...

Anyway, mine crashed late last year too, with lots of warning, I will admit, like the power switching itself on and off, and latterly the powerpack beeping. Took it to friends of mine who run a tech shop and was told it might have exploded...dunno if this is a mean old tech shop myth or not, but it scared me....ha ha!!

So....I bought an external hard drive with huge memory that's so small physically, I have to be careful not to lose it, and it wasn't expensive. The techies put all my old data from the hard drive on it for me, and now I know that I can't rely on my favourites list surviving another crash...they don't, and mine was *immense*....now I have a very low tech indexed notebook for the stuff I really want to keep.

I hope you and your Sony have a long and happy relationship!

Cait x

Edit to correct blip...fank ooo!


[edit on 16-2-2009 by caitlinfae]

reply to post by caitlinfae


Super idea. External drives are dirt cheap. 500 gig for $100-$150 bucks last time I checked. Mirror your links and favs onto this drive. They are plug and play connecting into your USB port. (2.0)

Just a minor correction - your data is not on your Mobo, it's on your HD. No biggie.

Two types of Memory - storage memory = hard drive. Virtual memory (i.e when the machine is switched on) is RAM.

Eventually manufacturers will solve this problem with board flex in laptops. In fact if you check around you can probably find some models with better than average resistance to mobo failure due to this.


[edit on 16/2/2009 by Syandos]

reply to post by elevatedone


Taking it into the shop is both unnecessary and expensive.

External drive enclosures, good for many things. Everyone should have one. You can hook up DVD burners also. You just plug the power cable into your HD and the ribbon cable. It's idiot-proof. Each is a different size and only goes in one way.

Tech visit - $100 bucks just to look plus a week's downtime. EDC - $30 bucks at your local e-store. Plugs into a USB port. (Just be sure to get the right size - two sizes, IIRC).

NOTE to all users of Windows XP (pro or home)...

Unless you have at least "sevice pack 1" installed, your operating system will only recognise a maximum of around 130(ish) Gigabytes for any large hard drive.

Eg: if you install a 250 Gb drive (internal or external) it will only have 130(ish) Gb of usable space.

.....get the microsoft service pack but don't spend money on something you can't use fully.

If anyone can confirm this please do.....cheers, nerb

Sorry to hear of your crash, Frank. Mine crashed, literally. Years ago my cat shoved a laptop off the desk with her back feet. I saw it happen; I couldn't get over to it in time.

I thought my current one was crashing, but it's been back to normal after MrD cleaned the build up of dust and cat hair hidden in the exhaust port. We still have a cat, the brother to the one that caused the first one to fall.

reply to post by nerbot


According to Wiki, the max size is Terrabytes, not Gigs.

Wiki NTFS

he maximum NTFS volume size is 256 TiB minus 64 KiB

Not disputing you nerbot, just a data point.

reply to post by Syandos


The maximum possible size that the Windows XP pro or home operating system can recognise without any service packs installed is 137 Gigabytes.

I'm not disputing the maximum "theoretical" possibilities or how they're measured at all.

Wiki source

(Both of these are vastly higher than the 137GB limit in unpatched Windows XP due to lack of 48-bit LBA hard drive addressing support)

If you'd continued reading to the next sentance in your Wiki quote you would have spotted the above.

ps...thanks for finding this.

[edit on 16/2/2009 by nerbot]

Ah great find Nerb.

A big "D'oh" on not reading the next sentence.

Is anyone still running WinXP without any service packs?

How did you happen to discover this flaw?

Good collaborative effort, then.

reply to post by Syandos


I used to run XP "naked"

I found out the hard way when I purchased a 160Gb hard-drive.

Took it back and got two 80Gbs and an explanation.

Just thought I'd warn members who were still using un-updated operating systems.

Cheers..nerb

^_^

Alright, well this repair person was able to get my laptop repaired to the extent where I can access my old files on it.

I can't access some of the things... but for what it's worth it really saves me a lot of trouble.