Should I bother backing up my work if sending a laptop in for repair?

[Mister Six]

I bought a Dell laptop last month, mostly for writing on. I've never had a problem with Dell before, but about a month in the motherboard crapped out. Bloke came around yesterday to replace the motherboard under the warranty, and it worked briefly before crapping out again today. Won't power on at all.

Now they want me to send it over to their lab for tests and fixing, but I'm worried they'll just format the SSD, accidentally or otherwise, and I'll lose everything.

Is that absurd? If not, what do I need to do to get the data off there and backed up? They said I can remove the hard disk without voiding the warranty, and I have that in writing.

EDIT: And no, no porn on there, thankfully.

[Blumf]

Should I bother backing up my work...

Yes!

...if sending a laptop in for repair?

Fucking hell, yes!


Look up your model on youtube or something to see how to open it up. Chances are you'll need some spudgers to crack open the case. (less than a tenner for a pry tool set from the usual places)

Whist watch those disassembly videos, check out what type of drive you'll have:

Pay attention to the connector, 2.5" SATA is easy enough to identify but the others can be tricky, look at the notches.



(chances are it's M.2 on a new laptop, but you never know)

Find yourself a USB caddy to fit that into and connect to another PC. Should be easy enough to pull any documents from that.

[Mister Six]

Cheers @Blumf! It's one of those long, thin SSD ones. Do you have a recommended caddy?

Also, should I worry about having left Chrome logged into my email etc? Can I boot into Windows from the hard disk via the caddy on another PC, just to log out of all that?

I've got a dodgy copy of Final Draft and some Doctor Who episodes torrented, too, although I doubt the Dell guys are going to turn me in to the fuzz.

[aunt mildred]

No need to worry about your email still being logged in as it will have timed out and logged you out. However, if you have your username and password stored in chrome browser they will be able to get in if they get it running without formatting the nvme (very much doubt they go snooping round customer emails though, you can always change the password from another device if this is a concern).

No idea about H or the caddy but if you have a relatively modern desktop you may be able to put the m.2 in that to get the data from it.

[Mister Six]

Cheers! I'll look into it.