I have a HP laptop, what I'm using right now, its been well looked after and always kept clean

I was just in youtube 20 mins ago listening to music when it started making a once a second high pitched chirping noise so I turned it off. When I tried the restart it came up with a message No boot device and inset boot disk

So I switched it off again and gave it a thump and now its going again as normal with no strange noises.

What's wrong with it??? I'm just about to save the C drive to an external hard drive but is there other things I should be doing???

advice please, scared to turn it off now in case it doesn't go back on again its normally a good behaved machine

thanks

That does sound like it could be your hard disk on the way out. Your laptop will only have one physical drive even if it shows as more than one in Windows so I'd backup all your data to an external drive over USB or your network. Prioritise the most important bits in case it goes while you are trying to backup.

this is very sad I don't even have disks for windows etc, even if I got a new hard drive I'd have to buy them and then somehow sort out all the systems files etc don't know how to do that

computer looks like new damn

thanks for the advice though

quote:

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Originally posted by Mr Whippy
this is very sad I don't even have disks for windows etc, even if I got a new hard drive I'd have to buy them and then somehow sort out all the systems files etc don't know how to do that

computer looks like new damn

thanks for the advice though

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Clone it.

or

Swap to Linux

or

Find a dodgy copy of windows.

Simple things first, it could well be a problem with the fan causing overheating, on laptops a good clean out of accumulated dust from theheat sink and fan and cleaning the contacts on the hard disk and memory can work wonders.

As said it certainly sounds like the disk
Assume it is and prioritise saving any important data , pictures docs etc onto a USB stick or external drive if its too big.
After that then look to fix/replace as suggested

Sounds like the disk platter is buggered. Some HDD's make a pretty tune when they are Fecked

In the past I have removed certain drives failing and put them in a bag and into the freezer for 2 hrs, this normally allows operational time to remove some if not all data before the heat generated causes the failure

Just don't forget you put it in there like one of my members of staff did after 2 weeks (Has anyone seen the hard drive from this machine?, not since you put it in the freezer Jim)

quote:

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Originally posted by Mr Whippy
this is very sad I don't even have disks for windows etc, even if I got a new hard drive I'd have to buy them and then somehow sort out all the systems files etc don't know how to do that

computer looks like new damn

thanks for the advice though

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You guys are much much too quick to jump to the conclusion it is the hard disk --- yes it could well be but always check simple cheap to fix things first, an overheating processor can lead to some pretty odd symptoms.

Video play back is highly CPU intensive if like most laptops the cooling system is full of fluff and the fan gunge up the CPU will just fall over until it cools down which fits the description.

whether its the drive or not, you should make a good backup asap.

also hp laptops usually have a recovery partition on the disk, but restoring from that restores windows but destroys your data.