tapping noise on laptop

[pinkcowprint]

my parents laptop has started making a tapping noise and sometimes doesn't load or is very slow,they rang where they got it from and they said it sounds like the hardrive,but it costs �50 for the part and then they have to pay someone to fit it,does this sound about right or could i take it somewhere for them which would be cheaper?could i take it to pcworld or would they charge me just for looking at it?

[patrickstar]

Had the same thing with my Sony. I took my laptop to PC World where the Tech Guy listened to it and said sounded like the hard drive but would cost to check it out. The laptop had gone really slow to boot up etc, then the tapping, then warning messages. Found out the part number, located a replacement online. I removed the hard drive from the back and new one slotted in. Had the recovery disc, and a few hours later all as good as new. Glad I had backed everything up so no major harm done and the drive cost me �45. Good luck

[fo3nix]

Tapping could be a number of things.

If it is the hard drive, tell your parents to back up to CD or flash drive (or email or whatever) everything valuable they have on there that they can't easily get back by downloading.

�50 seems reasonable to me assuming it includes labour too. Though, check the size of the drive they'll replace it with. You can get a large drive for this price and fit it yourself quite easily, it just takes a bit of knowledge. If it is the hard drive, it's a 5 minute job to swap the drives, and longer to actually copy the stuff from old drive to new drive (which may not be worthwhile anyway if it's being corrupted).

[ACtheTROLL]

just to add to fo

it's not going to get better
backup - do it now not tomorrow ....

the $60000 question is do you have the restore disc
if you do - with a bit of thought you can do it yourself
if you don't ... taking it somewhere that can transfer your system to the new disc is worth the extra

the other alternative is a new machine ... how old is it ..???
and which version of windows (it helps know what size HDD will fit)

parents tend to want to fix things ... because that's what they are used to - fixing an old machine isn't always a sensible option

[ACtheTROLL]

dash

the other other option is that it's just very very very badly corrupt - or fragmented (how old did you say?)

problem is - running the disc check and defrag progs are very stressful and likely going to be the last straw for a failing drive

here is what you could have
�50 could be a bit steep depending on what they are going to put back
http://www.eclipsecomputers.com/subcategories. aspx?subcat=19&subcatname=Laptop Drives&cat=19

then again
http://www.shop.bt.com/category/components-and -storage,storage,internal-hard-drives/11154-47 250000

depending what data / operating system needs transferring �20-30 labour is fair

[pinkcowprint]

i bought a refurbished one for them at christmas from a shop but the guarantee has run out,how app!!they dont do anything apart from surf internet so would they really need to back up anything?its a windows xp but cant think of the model.i am also crap at technology so it would have to be sent somewhere to get fixed anyway.they still have their old tower computer whats been going for years so they still have access,just annoying when its only lasted 6 months!

[fo3nix]

Hard drive errors rates are quite random, so it's not too much of a surprise.

Also make sure they aren't moving the laptop about too much with it turned on. Hard drives have precision moving parts, and don't like to be shook.

Can you take it back to the place you got it from, if they do simple repairs like this? They may well be cheaper than PC World, and I'd think they'd do a better job too! (I'm not too impressed by PC World. A bunch of monkeys could do better.)

[pinkcowprint]

it was from a shop on ebay,and are based down south,(im in north west)they were very helpful on the phone though,think ill ring round a few local places and see what they say,thanks for oyur help.

[ACtheTROLL]

the big question is - do you have a recovery disc?

it's all academic if you don't have the software to get it running again.