Rattling on Notebook lappy = Bad, right?

[Beller0ph1]

Title says it all! I have an almost 2 year old Compaq 1700T laptop that has seen its share of problems. It had a bad display out of the box. The headphone jack has a short in it. Now the hard drive rattles when you turn it upside down. Does anyone have an idea about what causes this noise? Is it worth replacing? Of course this happens RIGHT when the warranty expires. I have two friends with the same model that ended up replacing a total of 6 (count them, 6) hard drives between the two of them. Specs on the laptop (if I can remember them)

- PIII 850MHz
- 256MB PC100 SODIMM RAM
- 20GB IBM HDD

 

[mocca]

The rattling noise from HDD doesn't have to mean that the HDD is bad. In some IBM HDD model, there is a head protection mechanism that create rattling noise when move the HDD especially flipping it. I would, however, pay attention to the HDD and make back up more often if you suspect that the HDD is going south.

Mocca

 

[jschuk]

Most of the modern laptop HDD's rattle to some extent. Heck, they even say "rattle noise normal" on the label if you look at the drive. I agree with Mocca, backup your data now if you are leary about your drive, plus it is always good to make backups regardless. It is probably not worth replacing until you know for a fact that the drive is bad.

 

[Paperlantern]

if computer boots, jsut back up often... if stuff starts seeming like its taking a while to do, loading programs, loading the OS, etc, etc... may mean the drive is "going south" meaning the drive is having to read several times to get the data off the platter... try running a drive test, like PC DR, it'll tell you if you have bad tracks or something of that nature