5 year old laptop with a failing fan

[artee]

On a 5 year old laptop with a recently noisy (and probably failing) fan, will I be able to copy my files to another computer when the fan finally fails or is it a catastrophic event which disables the laptop completely?

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

You can always pull out the hard drive and use a USB to SATA adapter to retrieve the files onto another computer even if the laptop completely dies or refuses to boot because of the fan error. The hard drive will be unaffected by the death of the other components. In the meantime if you can still boot up the 5 year old machine why can't you back up important files to the cloud or an external storage device right now?

The fan is not expensive but the labor to replace it can be extensive and costly. If you want to try to fix it we can link you to a cheap place to buy the part and likely video instruction to do the swap but not everybody feels comfortable taking apart a laptop. Taking out just the hard drive is much easier and we can assist with that, too.