Sony Vaio hard drive that will not boot

drewdarling · 12-29-2008, 07:17 PM

Hello all.

My trusty Vaio will not boot. The hard drive ticks endlessly. The local repair shop tells me they did their best--including freezing it--and said it's toast.

However, a friend vastly more technical than I says try Knoppix and Linux. But very quickly he started speaking over my head.

The question is this: If the thing won't boot up, how can Knoppix work?

Thank you all for your help.
drewdarling

{BBI}Nexus{BBI} · 12-29-2008, 07:34 PM

He's referring to either backing up your data or making an image of the drive. I suggest you try SpinRite. It's not free, but well worth the money. Like you I had these "experts" tell me my laptop drive was done in, because all it would do is make a clicking/ticking sound. I read some testimonials on SpinRite based on the positive feedback i bought it. After running that software against the drive, it is alive and kicking. It's been going for 2yrs now. Give that a try if all else fails.

drewdarling · 12-29-2008, 07:47 PM

From Maine to Nottingham, thank you kindly for the suggestion. I will go now to research SpinRite.

If you can forgive my ignorance, will you explain what running the software against the disk means?

I await your every word.

{BBI}Nexus{BBI} · 12-29-2008, 08:03 PM

Basically you would put the drive into a laptop, boot off the SpinRite cd and choose the type of action you would like to run. I forget the specific name of the test i ran. Just read the descriptions it is very easy to follow. If you buy it and still have problems running it make a post in this thread.

Please don't just take my word for it, read the info for yourself, make sure you are satisfied with parting with your money.