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A Fun Thing Happened Today: Or, How To Cope With Working Laptop Death

emmaki

By emmaki
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emmaki Grand Master

emmaki

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Yep, a few hours ago my trusty workstation of five years decided to exert one final middle finger in my direction before obstinately doing nothing but 100% disk errors, then noping the Hell out of doing anything. Since I save my work in the cloud and am a smart freelancer, of course I have a (slightly crappy) backup! So this is more of an irritant than anything.

But a moment of silence for dear old Samsung 550P, who was a beast in the early days, but suffered a brief short illness before succumbing to death. He is survived by a collection of elderly laptops I really ought to throw out, and will soon be replaced by an Asus ZenBook I spent far too much money on. But hey, 4K TOUCHSCREEN AND SSD STUFF.

Anyway, that’s all of January’s revenues swallowed up. #thanksobama

I would just replace the HD in the broken one to keep my army of semi-awful backups going, but the keyboard’s losing the plot and anyway, I think an upgrade after 4/5 years is pretty decent. Here’s hoping the new one lasts as long.

#rip

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misscrystal Grand Master

misscrystal

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Where will you dispose of the old one?
I researched how to obliterate a hard drive and ended up shooting the last that died with a shotgun.
When the next one dies it might end up in the ocean, although I’m not eager to add to the pollution.
I also might get some liquid Draino (acidic drain cleaner) and pour it on the drive.

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emmaki Grand Master

emmaki

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Where will you dispose of the old one?

I researched how to obliterate a hard drive and ended up shooting the last that died with a shotgun.

When the next one dies it might end up in the ocean, although I’m not eager to add to the pollution.

I also might get some liquid Draino (acidic drain cleaner) and pour it on the drive.

I have a cupboard full of semi-dead laptops, wires I have no idea what to do with, ancient cellphones and similar junk. I’m not quite sure where to dispose of them here (one suspects the bin, as recycling still isn’t something that’s super-common here). I mean, I can get a new HD installed for like $100 and aside from that, it’s still good for writing and basic stuff, so I’m considering it. But I did promise myself that I’d get a nice new laptop that could handle video editing and stuff like that next time it gave up the ghost.

ended up shooting the last that died with a shotgun

This is sooooo American!

Perhaps you could take it (when the time comes) to your local computer repair guy? He might or might not pay you for it (parts), but he’ll definitely know how to dispose of it correctly. Pretty sure he could fix the HD thing too.

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misscrystal Grand Master

misscrystal

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I have a cupboard full of semi-dead laptops, wires I have no idea what to do with, ancient cellphones and similar junk. I’m not quite sure where to dispose of them here (one suspects the bin, as recycling still isn’t something that’s super-common here). I mean, I can get a new HD installed for like $100 and aside from that, it’s still good for writing and basic stuff, so I’m considering it. But I did promise myself that I’d get a nice new laptop that could handle video editing and stuff like that next time it gave up the ghost.

ended up shooting the last that died with a shotgun

This is sooooo American!

Perhaps you could take it (when the time comes) to your local computer repair guy? He might or might not pay you for it (parts), but he’ll definitely know how to dispose of it correctly. Pretty sure he could fix the HD thing too.

It’s my understanding that when the hard drive makes that clicking sound and nothing happens, it’s dead. I’ve had that happen a few times now. There is no fixing that. And still your information and all data is on it and can be retrieved. There are companies that charge around $800 to take all the information off a dead hard drive and put it on a new one. They have special equipment for that, that most people don’t have so it’s a specialized job.

So it’s a good idea to destroy the dead hard drive in a way that nothing can ever be retrieved from it.

We love to have an excuse to shoot something. It was quite satisfying to give it a proper send off in that way, and fun to see the little pieces fly in all directions. It can also be run over with a truck several times as a friend did to his.

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saddu_writer Apprentice

saddu_writer

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Why spend so much on a laptop? MacBooks are too damn expensive. I would rather save my money and have it earn an interest (passive income) for me.

instead of buying other brands that would cause issue, why not switch to macbook that are not that costly ($1000) and be free for almost life time with no hardware and other issues at all. #PersonalExperiance

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bolharr2250 Newbie

bolharr2250

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Where will you dispose of the old one?

I researched how to obliterate a hard drive and ended up shooting the last that died with a shotgun.

When the next one dies it might end up in the ocean, although I’m not eager to add to the pollution.

I also might get some liquid Draino (acidic drain cleaner) and pour it on the drive.

You’re right about the clicking sound. That’s a mechanical error that takes $300-$1000 to recover any data period, with a small chunk of it likely completely corrupted. The drive can only be fixed in a clean room, in addition to specialized tools for opening the thing without breaking it.

@saddu_writer: Macs are great for some people, but the price to performance ratio is very poor, especially with the new one only having USBC ports and the audio jack Apple claims to be outdated but included anyways. Again, great for some people but only people with money. I’ve supported them for years, and while the old ones were troopers, the new ones cannot be upgraded and the software is in hyper-planned-obsolescence. I would recommend a Macbook Pro 2012 but not anything after that for my clients (yet, I’ll wait and see if apple wises up).

Macs used to have the edge of being the best for creatives, but with the whole Adobe suite optimized for PC, and Final Cut Pro being only so/so, Mac no longer has any significant advantage besides being easier to maintain in the short-term, but still needs all the cleanup a PC will after a year or two.

I personally user a Razer Blade, an equally overpriced PC that has much better performance than a Macbook. I ponied up because I wanted the portability for later, and it should last me a few years playing games, and several more after that for just work. I don’t recommend the model I have to anyone looking for a work computer, but the Razer Blade Stealth is slimmer than a macbook and more powerful too, and starts at $999.

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