<p>aghhh! i just dropped my computer for the third time! and this time it took awhile to start up. it somehow slid off the table while i was getting up, hit my plastic dorm chair and then the floor. the vent cover got cracked.</p>
<p>it's working alright right now. i just hope that the fall didn't do anything serious. what's the worse thing that could happen?</p>
<p>If the hard drive was working when it hit the floor, it is possible in a worst case scenario that it breaks. The hard drive is mechanical, and the little arm that helps read and write info to the disc could break or get out of position and cause to be useless. That’s in the worst case.</p>
<p>You could also cause connections to come loose. The worst of this would be a connection to your screen. You could even crack the screen after a fall.</p>
<p>But it seems you’re booting up okay and you could read the screen, so don’t worry too much. Just watch out for unusually noises or heat issues. You don’t want to have had a screwed up fan either.</p>
<p>Better luck next time…</p>
<p>It seemed like it survived, but the hard drive might have gotten its lifespan greatly reduced.</p>
<p>I suggest backing up all your data and at least getting the hard drive replaced, just to be sure. Other than that, the rest of the electronics, save for the optical device, either work or don’t work. You’ll just have to wait it out.</p>
<p>Adding onto the “check your harddrive” statement, also download SpeedFan and check your temperatures. Another possible damage your laptop could have sustained is warping/damage to the cooling system in your laptop, and if the cooling really is damaged, your laptop could easily overheat and die.</p>
<p>Out of curiosity, what brand laptop do you have? Some companies (I know Asus for sure) offer accident protection as a standard part of your warranty.</p>
<p>Get a hard drive. They’re cheap. Set it up to be bootable - google what that means for your OS. Then clone your laptop’s hard drive on to that one. Set it up so you can do incremental back-ups. </p>
<p>If you use a Mac, you need to set the extra hard drive to GUID partition type. (It will almost certainly not be that way when you buy it.) To do this, open Disk Utility in the Utilities folder, click on the drive’s lowest level or root name - usually it’s manufacturer or a generic name, not what you’ve labeled it - and you’ll see a partition tab appear. At the bottom, you’ll now see options for setting up a partition scheme and select GUID. </p>
<p>Then get Carbon Copy Cloner, which is free. Clone your drive to other. It will take maybe 4 to 5 hours and ideally you should be there in case something happens. If it hangs up, feel free to restart the computer and CCC will pick up where it left off. </p>
<p>Then when you back up, you’ll see options for incremental, for deleting stuff or not that’s been removed from your laptop’s drive, for archiving them or not. It’s a great thing. Totally painless after the initial clone. </p>
<p>This then means you have your actual computer. If you then need a new one or if your laptop’s drive dies, then you can clone the copy on to the new one and you are set.</p>