Laptop Stops Responding

[L337Llama]

So, I own a lenovo thinkpad t60 that is a bit old. It still works well enough, except I am having hard drive issues. It is also out of warranty.

Anyway, I dropped it about a foot in January, and was having issues where the laptop would stop responding. I would be using the internet, etc, and the hard drive activity light cuts off and the screen freezes. I left it for about half an hour and it remained frozen on that spot. I eventually figured out at the time that it seemed to be the hard drive was loose, so I opened the cover and pushed it to make better contact with the sata port.

That seemed to resolve the issue until tonight. I used the computer, trying to run ms config, the internet, or browse windows explorer, and ran into the same issue, where the hard drive activity light shuts off and the computer becomes completely non-responsive. I have removed and reset the hard drive, and that is not fixing the problem. Right now I am trying to diagnose the issue. I don't know if the hard drive might have been damaged and is giving out, or if the motherboard is failing. I would appreciate any suggestions or insight into this matter. In addition, I was wondering what would I have to do if I wanted to hook the hard drive to my desktop and read it like an external hdd.

Thank you for your time.

 

[Ketchup]

If it's SATA it should hook up to your desktop like a normal drive. I would run Seatools on the drive, as it sounds to me like the drive is the problem. If it passes, let me know and we can move on to something else.

 

[Puppies04]

In addition, I was wondering what would I have to do if I wanted to hook the hard drive to my desktop and read it like an external hdd.

As ketchup pointed out, you don't need to run it like an external drive, just run a sata lead to it from your mobo and plug a power connector in from your PSU and run it as an internal drive while you run a thorough check on it.

 

[corkyg]

If it froze while surfing the Internet, that suggests to me that it is not the HDD, but perhaps other things need to be reseated - espcially RAM (SODIMMs) and CPU. I have T60, and it is pretty much a tank. It dropped 3 feet onto concrete at the Charlottesville, VA airport a couple of years ago, and suffered no consequences.

The HDD is well mounted in a caddy with soft rubber rails. It is secured by a right angle plastic cover held in place by one screw. It is a very tight fit, and I can't visualize it being loose.

Yes, you can simply remove the HDD in its caddy and connect the two SATA plugs to any desktop internally.

 

[Ketchup]

If it froze while surfing the Internet, that suggests to me that it is not the HDD, but perhaps other things need to be reseated - espcially RAM (SODIMMs) and CPU. I have T60, and it is pretty much a tank. It dropped 3 feet onto concrete at the Charlottesville, VA airport a couple of years ago, and suffered no consequences.

The HDD is well mounted in a caddy with soft rubber rails. It is secured by a right angle plastic cover held in place by one screw. It is a very tight fit, and I can't visualize it being loose.

Yes, you can simply remove the HDD in its caddy and connect the two SATA plugs to any desktop internally.

Yeah, thinkpads are great machines. My home laptop feels almost dinky after I have been on my thinkpad for any length of time.