Laptop wear and tear

[Torn Rose]

I have a Dell Inspiron 8200 which I got 2 years ago, and I do everything on it. I’ve had no issues/complaints with it until 3 months ago.

A week before we left for Internext, the cooling fans started making noises, which got worse and then they started grinding when they went off. I had gotten a 3 year at home warranty, so Dell sent a guy here to replace them free of charge. The tech they sent said it was a common thing with this model and the new models have been changed.

Then today I heard a slight noise, and thinking it was the fans once more I picked it up to look at them when it made a very loud grinding sound that sounded like a blender going off with a piece of metal in the blades. The fans where not on at the time and I could feel the vibrations.

I called Dell and my worse fear came true. My hard drive just died. We did a few tests to make sure it was the hard drive, and it is. The noise was so loud that that Dell tech said she heard it and never heard of a hard drive doing that.

Dell is sending me a new hard drive, but of course it will be blank, and I lost everything on my hard drive. Which I’m lucking out, since I have a backup of all my important items from a few months ago so really the only thing I will lose is e-mail from the last 2 months or so and time/effort.

This laptop has gone everywhere with us, I’m very careful with it and it has never taken a “hit” to where I would think this would happen, But this was the first laptop I have ever had and I was wondering if anyone else has had issues like this and is this just “normal” wear and tear of travel.

Dell told me to contact a local dealer and ask if they can recover the data off my hard drive. When I did and ask for the cost I was told $200 for service and $1500 for recovery. Which made me laugh. I don’t need those emails THAT bad.