Hard Drive crashes

[Dark_Phantom]

Does anyone have any suggestions for random hard drive crashes?  I get a Blue Screen of Death after a random freeze (really completely random, no pattern)    I know it is my hard drive because after it crashes, my Hard Drive no longer registers to my computer (well, it kind of does.  In BIOS settings it "exists" and has it's name and everything.  When it loads, it states "No Hard Drive found, Please insert boot disk."

If I wait before turning my comp back on, it is usually fine.  But it crashes at the most inopportune times.  I am happy though that I have been printing off school papers beforehand so I'm not too worried about the waiting part.  I imaged my hard drive after this happened the first time.  I have also concluded that this is not caused by a virus because all my data still exists and I ran virus scanners and they all turned out good, and this is not a consistent problem yet.

Toshiba C655 laptop
Windows 7 Home
500 GB HDD
4 GB RAM (I also use a flash drive to get 4 more GB out of it)
Bought in 2010

Any suggestions?  Just get a new hard drive?  Special tricks that I don't know about even after ripping the darn thing apart last month (no loose cords or wires)?  New computer (it's 3 years old... but that is forever in computer years)?  I hate to dish out that kind of money but I'm a college student who kind of needs his laptop to write papers at least.   

I have also considered just taking a portable jump drive or external HDD and keeping that in a safe place and uploading an operating system on it, and when my HD dies I can still do the essentials (the bare essentials, like check my email).  I can probably partition off some of my external hard drive and dedicate it to my copy of Windows 98 that I have somewhere.

[tirpider]

I used to repair PC's, but that was back when the first 1x cd-roms were rolling out, so my advice may be dated.
I'm coming fresh out of a similar HD death issue. (BIOS sees it but sometimes doesn't boot.)

If you are getting BSOD's it's a pretty good bet that it's a hardware issue.
What Hardware?
Could be the drive, could be it's controller board, could be the motherboard drive controller, or something silly like a cable that has walked itself out of place due to heat.

If you are comfortable climbing into it, check all the cables you can. Make sure they are firmly seated and don't have giant balls of dust on them. (You get lucky sometimes and this is actually what fixes it.. not so much these days though.)

The next thing I would do in the situation you describe is to replace the existing hd and use the original as little as possible , like only to make a back up of it.  Every time it spins up may be the last time it does. Data recovery after that is big $$$.

Then make a plan for saving data that doesn't rely solely on the internal drive of your machine (laptop or desktop).
Put the OS and programs on the internal.
Save everything else (projects/documents/ect) to an external.
Never use "My Documents" again cause it's on the C:\ drive (Good job MS). Use the D:\ drive (or whatever letter the external is.)
Installing large programs on the external is good as well. (I'm thinking games and Steam here.)


If you are just going to have the OS and some programs installed, then your internal HD doesn't need to be very big. So get a smallish drive for that and get a big external.  My OS drive is only 40GB for XP but I have 300gb, 250gb, and 500gb  external drives.  But 100gb drives are pretty cheap.

Since your problem is intermittent (doesn't happen all the time) it may be heat related, or may even be bad memory somewhere (ram, cache, some weird little buffer somewhere). So trouble shooting it is going to involve hardware swaps. Since it's a laptop, there is only so much to swap (ram and hd).

If swapping for a new hd clears it up completely, then cool, you only had to replace a HD. If it doesn't though, then it could get expensive fast and replacing the laptop may be a cheaper alternative.

If it does turn into a laptop replacement, then the purchase of a HD isn't wasted, as it can be used as an external by getting a cheapo external drive kit for it.

Going for a budget machine may save your butt as far as school is concerned, but will limit your gaming options.
This may be a sad sacrifice.

Bottom line:
I think you need to replace your HD before it fails and tears are shed.