Hardware Issues / Backing up data

[Nate Smith]

Originally Posted by MattD

It looks like my hard drive is hosed and that I will have to order a replacement from Dell. It shouldn't be too much of a problem because the laptop is still under warranty. I am by no means a hardware expert (especially when it comes to laptops) so I am looking for advice on what the appropriate course of action should be. I'm not sure if I should stop using the drive for now or not based on how quickly it will spread and ruin the rest of it.

The thing that confuses me the most here is why it has such a profound impact on the performance of Windows, and yet on Linux I wouldn't have even known about it. I guess most of the problem areas reside on the Windows partition?

Here's what I would recommend:
1. Back up all your data using your Ubuntu install and a network connection to another machine.
2. From now until you get your new drive from Dell, save any documents created to a safe location, either to a removable disk (USB flash drive, network share, etc.)

It does sound like part of the windows portion of the drive has gotten damaged, and that's why you're not seeing problems in Ubuntu. It's also possible that part of the Linux install is damaged, but it's part that you don't use very often. Since just about every feature is a separate executable file in Linux, it's more likely that you have isolated problems if any there, rather than the widespread problems you are seeing with Windows.