So I accidentally tripped on the cord to my laptop this evening, and luckily it fell on a soft padded chair before hitting the rug on the floor, so the LCD sustained no visible damage. I came back to it and started using it, but it froze solid after about twenty minutes, allowing only the mouse to move and not even responding to the three-finger salute. Upon hard reboot, it insisted that c:\windows\system32\config\system was corrupt or missing, and that I should repair it. Hmm, strange. I reboot, same message. One more reboot, this time choosing safe mode with cmd prompt. It just shows a black screen with a constant-on HD light, so I put my ear to the hard drive area of the case, and I hear "whiiiiiiirrrrr .... clickclickclick .... whiiiiiiirrrrr .... clickclickclick". Now, since this is the third laptop hard drive in less than six months to fail on me, I was smart enough to have SyncBack copying my entire c:/Documents and Settings/KermMartian folder daily to a remote server of mine, but I'll still have to reinstall all my favorite programs and preferences, not to mention having to find the disks for Microsoft Office and Matlab again. Since it's Black Friday tomorrow, I'll be able to pick up a 120gb internal 2.5" SATA drive for $69 plus tax (the current one is 100gb), but I'll still have to dig up my repair CD and spend at least an hour or two just restoring basic functionality. Shoddy tech equipment ftl.

I try to keep all power cords where nothing can get to them, however my cat has a tendency to play with them wherever they are so I have to be cautious >.>

Yeah My dad has had harddrives go on him it sucks, recently his builtin sound card died so I can't play many of my games or music at his house .

yeah, they can be annoying.

Also, I think Lifehacker had a report on this, on how to make your own recovery partition once your system is set up. That should help getting your computer back up and running faster. I will see if I can find the link.

No, this would be 100% user error. Don't blame the harddrive because you knocked your laptop over. There is a reason modern laptop harddrives have shock sensors in them to lock the head - maybe you should pick one of those up since you lack the ability to just not drop your laptop?

It's pretty poor to blame the equipment manufacturer when you *trip* on a cord and cause the laptop to fall. Try taking responsibility for your actions sometime instead of shifting blame elsewhere.

That sucks man...
MagSafe ftw!
I love how hard drives keep on getting cheaper.

How dare stuff not work when you handle it improperly... HOW DARE IT?!

STOP TRYING TO BOOT FROM THE HD!!!!!
I am guessing the head is damaged, and that you won't be able to use it again. However, you may be able to copy the files on your HD to another. I don't know if you will be able to do a complete copy since there is supposedly wrong with the system32 directory (which you will need if you want to copy your programs), but there are probably other files that you want to keep (besides the ones you already backed up). Every time you try to boot from your HD it causes damage, making it less likely that you will be able to recover files. Since I can't be positive about what is wrong with your HD, I suggest you check the prices to have the drive recovered (if possible).

I'm aware, thanks. Trust me, I've gone through this many times. As I noted in my first post, I have an offsite backup that was only 4.5 hours behind the actual hard drive, so I'm all set in that regard.

Rivereye: the HD already had a restore partition, but that doesn't really help me since it crashed, does it?

Fixed.

hey Kerm, maybe you should look at a solid stat drive also while you are at it.

funny story. I had two hard drives of approximately the same age (from an old dell, and an iMac G3 respectively) die within about 4 hours of each other.

Yeah, if only they weren't so expensive. Solid state drives are definitely attractive to me.

Edit: writing this from my tablet. Yay for Ubuntu live CDs.