? On the same machine that HD crashed last year.

[mabr]

Ok I need some advice. Some may remember I had a hard drive do the clicking death about a year ago. Well Toshiba fixed it under warranty and it has been great until the last 2 days. Yesterday the screen froze up and the screen brightness gradually went dim until the laptop just shut off. I hit power button and it came up with a warning that windows shut down in properly and asked the question of how to start windows up. I did normal and it rebooted fine. This morning It did it again, although this time after powering it back on a bios menu popped up and no matter what I hit it would say it was in-operable i think is the term it said. Well I pulled the hard drive out let it sit for a few minutes and plugged it in and it started just like nothing happened and is still acting normal as I type this.

My question, Is this a symptom i need to be worried about, Like the HD is going to crash soon? I have kasperski anti virus and it says it's not a virus or similar issue based on it scanning the system .

I backed up everything to my seagate free agent go flex external storage devise for this laptop today so I'm not worried about files i might lose if it were to crash. But I don't have any CD's made to restore operating systems or software installed on this laptop so I want to have those systems should It crash. Or are they already saved on the seagate drive? All I do is plug it in via usb port and it automatically does it, but what its saving i don't really know. Any help would be appreciated. I don't want to be down again for 3 weeks waiting on Toshiba to get it back to me.

[delcecchi]

If you have created a system image as part of backup, make a system repair disk and you can recreate your current system using the system image.

Otherwise you will need on OS Installation disk to reinstall.

[upnorth]

Many PCs/laptops have a backup utility to create disks to reinstall the Operating system. Not so sure about the currently installed apps.

[delcecchi]

The microsoft backup can create a system image that, by booting from a repair disk, lets you put it back exactly they way it was. applications, data, everything.

[Jim Almquist]

I have a Toshiba with Windows 7 Home and I was able to make a backup of the system on a DVD. Takes a little time so I would get going before yours crashes again.

[Shack]

Good way to clear all and everything and start fresh (Toshiba for sure) is to disconnect all ethernet and power cords, remove battery and hold down power button for 30+ seconds. Should clear all errors messages from past events and if an immediate concern is not found on the preliminary bios test, should clear out any past messages.

Always nice to have the DVD backup images burned for/when a hard drive does fail but if everything is working fine and a restore or replace of the entire operating system is in order and the HD is working fine you should be able to do this from the recovery console with no DVD's being needed. Tosh creates a recovery partition as a form of not having to supply recovery DVD's with their PC's. After you clear the bios as I stated above I believe restarting or fresh starting the PC while holding down the F8 or F10 key will boot you into the recovery console. Follow the prompts and recover or restore to your liking.

If you have a hard time getting into the HD's recovery partition, burn yourself a standard Toshiba recovery disk and start PC while holding down F12 and select the DVD drive to start/boot from. The recovery software will start and should detect the recovery partition and be the same as if you were holding down F8 or F10 prior to booting BIOS.