Replace Hard Drive or Buy New Laptop?

[KeeSmyth]

I keep getting notification from my laptop that my hard drive is failing and should be replaced. It's a sony vaio notebook that i bought about 4 years ago and has been very reliable haven't had many problems. How much would cost to replace hard drive and what are some good affordable options for buying a new laptop?

 

[Blood Python]

I have a vaio that I want to replace soon and I would feel comfortable buying an Asus.

 

[KeeSmyth]

im debating if i should just spend the big bucks and buy a macbook

 

[TeTe]

If you want a new laptop then just get one.

That said, hard drives are easy to replace and you could get one for about $40. Maybe keep it as a backup.

 

[MajinSaga**]

The better question is, WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU STILL USING A HARD DRIVE?
Thatt shit is caveman tech. Time to go SSD.

 

[ValeTudo95]

I had to replace the failing hard drive on my old (XP) laptop as the OS had slowed to a crawl and kept crashing (had fixed bad sectors on the HD several times, but it stopped doing any good). I bought a new HD and installed Linux Mint, and it's never run quicker.

You can get a reasonably sized 2.5" hard drive for under $50, and Linux is free (just download it and burn it to a DVD). There isn't much support for games with Linux based OSs yet, but Mint comes pre-packaged with office software, Firefox, and an email client - so I'd definitely recommend doing that if gaming's not a priority.

 

[Ladder Master]

Yup back up all your personal files.
Locate or create discs to reinstall operating system
Purchase SSD that is at least 128gb
Throw in new SSD (extremely easy) and install OS
Enjoy faster computer.

 

[SevenSamurai]

I would say replace the HD except you said the magic words "SONY VAIO"

replace with new Ultrabook

 

[elmo_1968]

I had to replace the failing hard drive on my old (XP) laptop as the OS had slowed to a crawl and kept crashing (had fixed bad sectors on the HD several times, but it stopped doing any good). I bought a new HD and installed Linux Mint, and it's never run quicker.

You can get a reasonably sized 2.5" hard drive for under $50, and Linux is free (just download it and burn it to a DVD). There isn't much support for games with Linux based OSs yet, but Mint comes pre-packaged with office software, Firefox, and an email client - so I'd definitely recommend doing that if gaming's not a priority.

Generally once you have bad sectors on a HD the end is in sight. Exception is there are often a few bad sectors at the time of manufacture, those don't count.

Fedora and Suse come w/ the things you mention in Mint, too. I think Mint is unique in that it comes w/ proprietary codecs for things like .mp3 and .wmv. You can get those things for other Linux distros, but they don't prepackage them.

 

[BoogerDawson]

I keep getting notification from my laptop that my hard drive is failing and should be replaced. It's a sony vaio notebook that i bought about 4 years ago and has been very reliable haven't had many problems. How much would cost to replace hard drive and what are some good affordable options for buying a new laptop?

If you are short on cash, you can run Puppy Linux without a hard drive. Go to puppylinux.org and download one of distros. Lucid puppy may work well. Burn it to a CD or DVD, and boot the CD. Puppy is loaded into RAM, and is the fastest OS. It can look kind of ugly, but it's lightweight and for web surfing, it feels much faster than Windows or Mac OS.

Otherwise, I agree with the above. Hard drives are cheap and generally very easy to replace. You can get them on eBay or check Craigslist or put a wanted ad. If you have more money, SSD's are the way to go.

 

[ralphc1]

I was a Sony buyer for many years but I bought a Vaio desktop about 4 years ago and I couldn't update it because Sony claims that model doesn't exist and I had to pay to talk to tech support so they could tell me that. I bought a Sony Blu-Ray player that will only play the previews and a few minutes of the movie before it locks up. Once again, to get tech support I had to pay first. Sony isn't worth buying.

 

[gotBooched]

Generally once you have bad sectors on a HD the end is in sight. Exception is there are often a few bad sectors at the time of manufacture, those don't count.

Fedora and Suse come w/ the things you mention in Mint, too. I think Mint is unique in that it comes w/ proprietary codecs for things like .mp3 and .wmv. You can get those things for other Linux distros, but they don't prepackage them.

i don't know how old you are but back in the 90's, you could actually partition away the bad sectors. i don't think you can do that now. but basically if you had bad sectors / clusters etc, you just partitioned them as another drive that you didn't you and bam your hard drive worked again.

 

[Osirian Portal]

I was a Sony buyer for many years but I bought a Vaio desktop about 4 years ago and I couldn't update it because Sony claims that model doesn't exist and I had to pay to talk to tech support so they could tell me that. I bought a Sony Blu-Ray player that will only play the previews and a few minutes of the movie before it locks up. Once again, to get tech support I had to pay first. Sony isn't worth buying.

I had the same problem with HP. I'll never buy another HP product simply because of their horrible support.

 

[elmo_1968]

i don't know how old you are but back in the 90's, you could actually partition away the bad sectors. i don't think you can do that now. but basically if you had bad sectors / clusters etc, you just partitioned them as another drive that you didn't you and bam your hard drive worked again.

I'm old.

My understanding was the bad sectors(other than ones present at manufacture time) were the result of head crashes, ie the heads striking the disk. If this is true, the HD is going to physically degrade over time. Even if you aren't trying to read the bad sectors, the heads still pass over the places the strikes occur, and the thing is going to degrade.

 

[goleta83**]

HD man