Dropped laptop, now Chkdsk every boot?

Hey guys, my girlfriend accidentally dropped her laptop from about a foot off the ground. The laptop was on during the fall, and remained on afterward. However, needless to say the laptop froze. Did a hard reboot, and Vista took abnormally long to boot, only to find that the computer began to run check disk. After the check, everything past and it booted windows normally. Seems to work ok, but once you try to run any program the computer eventually locks up and you have to hard power down to get anywhere (no, task manager doesnt work). Once it boots again, it once again wants to run check disk. Is there any way to repair such damage? Could the damage be physical to the drive sense it was dropped? Any help is GREATLY appreciated!

 

Sounds like physical damage, especially since the computer was dropped when the hard drive was spinning.

 

Can running check disk with the "scan and attempt to repair bad sectors" option checked help this? I'm in the process of doing this now, its obviously going to take forever.

 

You could try download HD Tune and check for bad sectors (it won't fix anything though); honestly I think the drive will have to be replaced if you want the computer to be reliable.

 

If you're lucky the head survived the impact and you're just dealing with damaged platters.
Personally, i doubt it. Generally speaking because of the truly tiny size of modern hard drive heads (especially notebook hard drives) they are very easy to damage.
At the very least i would be quite surprised if you didn't have to format/reinstall, as it sounds like part of the scratched data is Vista, and really i'd be pretty surprised if the hard drive didn't die completely sometime soon, if it isn't dead yet. It may well be in the "walking ghost phase".

As such, back up any/all important data NOW, then start working with what ever disk scanning/repair tool you like best.

 

It definitely sounds like physical damage. Some modern notebook hard drives have a free-fall sensor that stops the hard drive to prevent physical damage upon impact, but I doubt that's the case here. As bobnova recommends, you should certainly back up all the important data on that notebook while the hard drive still boots at all.

Luckily, hard drives are one of the easiest parts to replace in a notebook, as long as you get the correct size and interface. Besides, it could be an opportunity to upgrade to a higher capacity drive.

And if possible, I recommend getting one with the free-fall sensor this time.

 

Thanks guys, I appreciate the input. I found a nice 7200rpm drive of the same capacity on newegg.com, so we're just gonna order a new one and spend a few hours reinstalling everything and getting it all back to normal. Thanks again!