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Damn I have the worst luck. It all started a while ago but never really put two and two together. For about a week my DVD RW drive on my laptop has been makeing a lot of noise. Like the lazer is searching or something even though there is no disk in there. I've been having problems with it for about a year now and can't find out what the hell is wrong with it. I tried updateing drivers several times. I even went through the Microsoft diagnostic wizzard deal on their site and it was never of any help. It just seems to work whenever it wants to. Neither DVD data CD aucio cd or anything else other specific. Just works sometimes and most of the time it dosen't. I guess I could try cleaning it which is about the only thing I have not tried. I really never paid too much attention to the noise in the drive because like I mentioned I've been having problems with it. I was wrong. Since saturday I've been noticing the my computer has been running VERY slow. I usually run a lot of programs so figured that it may just need a restart but even at that it was taking like 10 mins to load a web page. I restarted windows and I got a message error saying that my HD is [censored] and backup all my [censored]. Most of the stuff that I think is important is already on my external HD so it's not such a big deal. I have around 5 gigs of files that I need to backup. 4 gigs or so are in one folder and to transfer it to my HDD it says that it will take 50 mins! That's with a USB 2.0 connection!!

First of a few questions. Where can I get a cheap replacement HD? Second with my DVD/CD drive screwed how can I install the other HD or fix my burner without any other software device? I do have an external DVD burner but don't most of the software come in floppy form?

I really want to keep this computer for a while. It's over 2 and a half years old but it's been very good to me. I just upgraded it to a gig of ram last summer and will not give up on it untill there is 2 gigs on there. THen I'll get rid of it after I get all the goody out of it. :P

My laptop is a Toshiba Satellite P15-s479.

Also my desktop (which is what I'm typeing on now) the HD every once in a while sounds like a semi downshifting. That's a good thing right?


Just my luck.

If you can, try disconnecting the dvd drive from the laptop. Then boot up the laptop and see if it still goes slow. Either way it sounds like you'll need to replace the dvd drive. And when you got the msg about your hard drive, was it from within windows or during boot up before windows starts?

1) www.tigerdirect.com usually has cheap stuff. Never bought a laptop hdd from them though.

2) Most software and drivers these days comes on cd so the external should work fine. If it comes on floppy you can burn it to a disk from you desktop.

Not sure exactly what you mean by semi downshifting, but working hard drive usually make a faint grinding sound.

I had a similar problem with my laptop. The CD/DVD burner drive was making a lot of noise every time it spun up a CD. So what I did was take off the back casing of the notebook, and then remove the screws holding the drive in place. Then I re-seated the drive and put the case back on, making sure everything was firmly in place. Afterwards, it worked fine, without any excess noise. The problem was simply that it had become loose and was rattling against the case when it spun a disk.

If you have an external CD drive, then you have everything you need to install a new hard drive. The only problem is that you'll probably not be able to install the OS from an external drive onto the new hard drive; the computer can only communicate with the external drive via USB once you've installed the OS. However, you shouldn't need a floppy drive for any reason of which I'm aware. I don't have a floppy drive in this laptop, or any computer I've owned for the last few years, and I've never had a need for one.

50 minutes sounds slow for 4GB over a USB2.0 connection, but I've done worse. I've sometimes spent several hours backing up hard drives, before USB2.0 even came out. I've also spent several hours transferring files over a wireless network connection. 50 minutes is no biggie.