Can Laptops Actually be Repaired?

12.28.12 | Chickensoup

[Chickensoup]

My Vaio stopped working this morning. The little disk light goes on and on. I took it to this diagnostics guy who said he would be able to tell if he can get it going.

My question. Can the hard disk be replaced? I have been looking for replacements and havent seen one I like as much.

I surf, run my website, check email and bank online. Not much else.

help!

[Chickensoup]

The Estranged was in the field with mainframes and minis. First thing he used to do with new customers is look up their financials to see if they could afford to pay him.

[TomGuy]

I bought a Samsung laptop last year. It lasted one month after the warranty. Then it shut off and would not turn on. Diagnostic tech said it was the motherboard and they could not get in info from Samsung on the cost of a replacement. It would probably cost more to try to fix it than it would be worth.

Samsung is on my list of companies to bypass for any future purchases. I had one of their DVR’s that only lasted a couple of years.

[Misplaced Texan]

For under $500, you can get a brand new machine with a warranty, the latest OS, faster processor, more memory, bigger drive, etc. ____________________ Boy I havent seen anything new like that.

At Best Buy today, you can buy a Toshiba with 4Gb Ram and 500Gb hard drive for $379.00.

I am sure there are others also.

[gaijin]

DATA enclosure, not dad enclosure, sorry.

They call also call them like 3 other names, and they're at BB, but the cheapest place is from Ebay, usually.

[Chickensoup]

Good to know

So far my bad list is:
Dell
HP
Samsung
Leveno
I am using my son’s Toshiba Satellite and it has a very stinky keyboard.

[Chickensoup]

Good to know

So far my bad list is:
Dell
HP
Samsung
Leveno
I am using my son’s Toshiba Satellite and it has a very stinky keyboard.

[jwalsh07]

BTW, you can get a 500G replacement drive for about 60 bucks at Amazon or a million other places.

[ez]

I took 3 laptops to Staples last year and they fixed all three. One needed a hard drive, one needed a low voltage power supply, and one needed a battery...DUH!! It was reasonable and I have all three machines back.

[PLMerite]

Can Laptops Actually be Repaired?

Not mine.

[DAC21]

*IF* the problem is the hard drive it can be replaced for less than $50. A tech who knows his stuff can determine that in about 30 minutes.

HAHAHA Surely, and no I didn’t call you Shirley, $50 isn’t going come close to paying for the HD let alone the Tech to determine the problem then repair it.

[JSteff]

No reason to spend $100 for a hard drive. Go to New Egg and you can probably have one for around $60.

They are not hard to replace at all.

What area are you in? Just be sure that you have your restore disk to replace your OS. If you do not have that, but have the OS COA on the computer you can just use any an OS of the same type. When you install, just use your COA number from the original OS.

Once you get it installed, just go to the SONY site and get the proper drivers for you model of laptop. Putting all that stuff back on is often the time killer of the whole process.

The drive is just minutes in comparison.

Good luck and enjoy. Just remember it is a machine and you are the human so it can NOT beat you. Just stick to it.

[Rabin]

MSftOC

Why is it necessary to back up the machine on a regular basis? Rab can but wounder.

r.

[Squawk 8888]

Where I live you can get 2.5” new SATA drives starting at $50 and most of the shops offer refurbs even cheaper.

[roadcat]

I have bought refurb drives for under $50, and they work great. Have periodically gotten larger and larger hard drives for my machines, and for friends. It is real easy to swap drives, after cloning the old one to a replacement via an external USB interface. Hardest partis waiting for the cloning process to complete copying the old drive. The old drive then goes into an external case as a spare portable drive. I regularly backup or clone to external drives, everyone should as insurance.

[Cololeo]

Just verify whether the drive is an IDE (unlikely), or a SATA. Driveimage XML is a wonderful free backup.

[Individual Rights in NJ]

Laptops overall really suck.

To be honest the only one I use is a Macbook Air, but I’m not really a mac guy. It is just the Air is really the only quality laptop to speak of. There is a Vaio ultrabook model or two that I have liked, but they are less reliable.

I won’t give up my self-built mega desktop for anything. If you sink about 3-4K it will last you about 7-9 years at this point and you’ll have ultimate horsepower the whole span, the way software and gaming has really leveled out about 4 years ago.

/end rant. lol.

[ansel12]

Just post the information about your laptop and we can google you a cheap hard drive from a safe place, with free shipping.

[Spktyr]

Yes, but the tradeoff is that you have to wait for it. It sounds like she needs it now, and the retail price for one is about $100, maybe a bit less.

[Wiggins]

Repairs such as hard disks and RAM are usually not a big deal. Key boards and mouse pads with left and right click buttons are a little more expensive but still not totally out of being replaced or repaired. The big money usually starts with processors and displays. That’s where it usually becomes a not worth it repair depending on the age of the laptop. In my opinion anything older than Windows 7 isn’t worth the time labor and cost if it goes further than the hard drive or RAM modules.

[Mr. K]

I have a Samsung washer- worst machine i ever owned

On the other hand two of the best were Dell and Honda