Potential laptop death

[MunchY]

So I turned on my laptop (some standard ASUS, nothing special) yesterday and Windows was taking a long time loading up. Never quite got there and I had to reboot. When I did I was greeted with the option to run start-up repair. I ran it for a few solid hrs and nothing really appeared to be happening so I gave up.

Today when I booted it up it went straight to a black error screen. I forget the error code but it mentioned making sure external USB harddrives (or something) were connected properly. Nothing was plugged into it except a mouse. I have an option on this screen to run some other thing that doesn't work, or try to boot windows again... Which also doesn't work..

I'm taking an uneducated guess that it's the harddrive, which is a pain in the **** cause there's heaps of stuff on there that I would very much like to keep.
Does anyone know what I can do? Should I try opening the laptop up and taking a look? If so, how should I go about it? It could just be dusty as hell.. I haven't really had any reason to suspect anything was wrong with it until now.

What other options do I have to retain my data if it's the harddrive? That aren't too expensive as it was a pretty cheap laptop.

Thanks to anyone who can offer some advice!

[Joker]

Symptoms sound like a dying HDD.

Most (not all) laptops have a easily replaceable panel clearly marked to access the hard disk.

The hard disk will probably have standard SATA connectors that you can plug into a desktop computer.

Personally I just plug them straight into a computer running clonezilla along with a new (blank) drive. You will know pretty quick if the drive is terminal. Clonezilla has a "rescue" option that will skip unreadable sectors.

[MunchY]

Symptoms sound like a dying HDD.

Most (not all) laptops have a easily replaceable panel clearly marked to access the hard disk.

The hard disk will probably have standard SATA connectors that you can plug into a desktop computer.

Personally I just plug them straight into a computer running clonezilla along with a new (blank) drive. You will know pretty quick if the drive is terminal. Clonezilla has a "rescue" option that will skip unreadable sectors.

Thanks mate, sounds like it might be the go. Do laptop drives cost more than normal ones? And will reinstalling the new drive in the laptop be relatively simple?

[MUG]

Do laptop drives cost more than normal ones?

Yes a little more.

And will reinstalling the new drive in the laptop be relatively simple?

Changing the hard drive itself is easy, saving what's on the old one is the hard part.

[MunchY]

Do laptop drives cost more than normal ones?

Yes a little more.

And will reinstalling the new drive in the laptop be relatively simple?

Changing the hard drive itself is easy, saving what's on the old one is the hard part.

Don't need a huge drive so that should be sweet.

Yeah. I've never done anything like this.. This could be interesting. As long as I don't blow up my desktop while attempting this I'll be happy.

[v4moose]

Shoulda gone with Carbonite

[MunchY]

Shoulda gone with Carbonite

Had never heard of it o.o

I'm on a connection with really bad upload speeds, so that'd probably be pretty rough anyway.

[Treloar]

Pays to backup your files on a regular basis.

I used a USB adapter to plug the HDD into another PC to backup files, you may also try a linux liveCD and backup to a usb flash drive.

My brother had a similar issue with his toshiba laptop, HDD 6 months old and cactus just like yours, toshiba warranty is a joke won't buy toshiba again.

[MunchY]

Pays to backup your files on a regular basis.

Definitely. And still after years and years, I have never brought myself to chuck down the money on an external or some sort of backup. Doesn't pay to be a cheapass!