Laptop took a fall

I put my laptop on a footrest no higher than a foot for one second and it managed to slip off. The thing still powers up but when loading windows I get an error that says to check the external storage or the hard drive or cd rom in case it's loose.

This couldn't have happened at a better time with finals next week.
So what should I do?

I'm under warranty so would this fall under it?
Will opening it up void the warranty?
I wanna check to see if somehow maybe the harddrive became unplugged?
I can bring it to the college IT center and see what they say, I'm sure they will have the screwdrivers to open it up.

Any ideas? Thanks

 

Sound like the fell damage your mechanic hdd.

Where you get your laptop? If it is not from your college, they probably wont fix it.
If you dun know what you are doing, dont open it. However, if you really need the data, the HDD should be easy to remove from the computer.

If you send it in for warranty , just act dump .

Just my personal thought for warranty in general ~~

 

I know what I'll be doing if I open it but would it void the warranty? Just in case it isn't because something became rattled I want to be able to fox it if not I still want to be able to send it back

 

Usually if you put it back as is and did not broke anything / lose a screw
It is pretty hard to tell.

But if you have the time to wait for repair, send it in is the better option imo.

 

Okay so I ended uP taking it to the it desk and they opened it up and determined the harddrive is shot. I'm okay with buying another one and replacing it as he also said it's possible to transfer all my data.

Couple questions about this:
Is there a chance more than the harddrive is broken that I don't know about? Like the graphics card. Don't want to buy a new harddrive to find out that there's more problems.

What does transfering the data entail, would I be able to do it myself or is there something special needed?

Thanks

 

I am not really familiar with doing HDD data recovery, but I believe they take it out to a enclosure and use software to get the data.

As for falling damage, It is really hard to break anything but the hdd. Most of the component is mounted with screw, so as long as they remain in one piece, they wont get much damage.

Hdd is a different story, because there is a dial and all those "good stuff" that moves inside it when power'd up.

That's why nowadays, most laptop come with software that stop the harddrive when it sense free fall.

 

Awesome thanks for the info.

As for a new hdd anyone recommend a specific drive? I was looking at the moments xt.

 

Go with a solid-state harddrive - once you do you'll never want to go back to spinning platters again!

 

SSDs are way too expensive I don't really want to spend over 150 for a new hard drive

I think I might go with the momentus xt sad hybrid
Nevermind will just go with wd Scorpio black drive