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Question

I believe my Vaio Hard Drive is toast, do I need a new one?

Feb 4, 2012 11:23PM PST

I have a Sony Vaio Desktop with Windows XP Media Center Edition. It is old.

Intel Pentium 4 Processor
2.80C GHz1 w/hyper threading technology
160 GB HD (7200 rpm)
512 MB PC-2700 DDR (exp. to 2.0 GB)

(I don't know anything about computers I just posted all of what seems important.)

So about 2 months ago my computer just randomly restarted itself. Wierd, but I didn't worry too much, it did it a few more times but I didn't have any other issues so I figured the power got interrupted (the power in my apartment is no good and often trips)

Then Itunes stopped working about 2 weeks ago and I could not seem to get a working copy downloaded and opened. I downloaded and removed like 3 times and it wouldn't load. (not sure if it's related but whatever)

Then yesterday I get home and my computer says from a black screen:

"Reboot and insert proper boot software"

I hit some key and it went to a menu which gave a read-out of my hardware which said
at the bottom:

"S.M.A.R.T. drive command failed"

so I got on a forum and someone said try disabling that function in the "Bios" menu so I did that, and tried to restart it, ended up on the same screen and this time it said:

"Primary Hard Disk Error"

And the hard drive clicks like it is trying to start spinning but it is not.

Please help. I don't want to lose all my information and I do not want to shell out 100 clams for a new drive.


Thanks in advance

Discussion is locked

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Answer
Has anyone told you how much it is to save the data?
Feb 4, 2012 11:33PM PST
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To: R Proffitt
Feb 5, 2012 6:23AM PST

Point well taken, thank you, and thanks for the link.

A local guy said he could retrieve certain files for $75 flat rate.

Still not exactly sure what happened or if there is a way to fix things without getting a new drive.

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At 75, that's cheap for clam chowder.
Feb 5, 2012 8:24AM PST