apparent R32 system board failure

[teflon]

A few months ago my optical drive began to randomly either show up in Windows or refuse to be recognized and often it was necessary to remove the drive or remove and replace it to boot up. I thought little of it, especially since I had surprisingly little use for the drive, rebooted the drive rarely, and above all didn't have time to fool around with it. A few days ago I sat down to tackle the issue as I am now on break, and have a new hard drive I wanted to swap in for the old one as the old is absolutely full, fragmented, and becoming more useless by the day. Needless to say, it is difficult to install the recovery cd onto the new hard drive if the computer won't boot when it recognizes the optical drive and then boots when it doesn't recognize it...
After a good deal of looking, I finally found pretaining information to my problem: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-52973 but the advice, "replace system board" doesn't sound appealing in the least bit. Given that I need an optical drive to boot off of at all times, does anyone have any suggestions on this problem other than replacing the system board or purchasing a new laptop?
The laptop is a 2.5 year old, out of warranty R32 2658-K4U. Thanks in advance for any help.

[Nolonemo]

You say you didn't use the optical drive much, so it sounds like all you really need it for is to set up the new HD.

Can you use the recovery CDs in another machine? I.e., either get and adaptor and put the 2.5" drive in a desktop or put the new drive in another laptop, then set up the disk from the CDs and swap back to your TP?

[teflon]

I actually haven't thought of the adaptor idea yet - that's clever... But, though there are a couple of good one-time solutions for setting up the hard drive, the reason I need it operational all the time is tied in to why I hadn't looked at it until this summer - I tend to have incredibly little time to play with hardware/settings/etc. but use the laptop as if it were necessary for my survival. At college it almost is... The fear is that I will set up the hard drive and have everything working only to get an unexpected crash and have no way of recovering data (i.e.; no linux live cd option) or reformatting to get the laptop operational until I could set up something just as intricate at school, which isn't much of an option.

[Nolonemo]

The fear is that I will set up the hard drive and have everything working only to get an unexpected crash and have no way of recovering data

I get your point. Given that you're dealing with a potential mainboard replacement, the cheapest solution probably is to get a second hard drive and an external USB enclosure and to periodically clone your TP drive to the external drive. Then if you crashed, you'd just have to swap the drives (I don't know if the R32 drive is as easy to change as the T series).

BTW, I'd also back up my data files to a USB key periodically. I use a program called Second Chance 2000 (I think) that you can set to copy new/changed files in directories you specify to a location you specify either automatically or manually. It also allows you to keep several change levels of files. I use this to back up data on shutdown, while I do a disk image of the whole system only when I load a new program or make a significant system change.

[AbsoluteRaleigh]

A few months ago my optical drive began to randomly either show up in Windows or refuse to be recognized and often it was necessary to remove the drive or remove and replace it to boot up. I thought little of it, especially since I had surprisingly little use for the drive, rebooted the drive rarely, and above all didn't have time to fool around with it. A few days ago I sat down to tackle the issue as I am now on break, and have a new hard drive I wanted to swap in for the old one as the old is absolutely full, fragmented, and becoming more useless by the day. Needless to say, it is difficult to install the recovery cd onto the new hard drive if the computer won't boot when it recognizes the optical drive and then boots when it doesn't recognize it...
After a good deal of looking, I finally found pretaining information to my problem: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-52973 but the advice, "replace system board" doesn't sound appealing in the least bit. Given that I need an optical drive to boot off of at all times, does anyone have any suggestions on this problem other than replacing the system board or purchasing a new laptop?
The laptop is a 2.5 year old, out of warranty R32 2658-K4U. Thanks in advance for any help.

Definately a bad board. It will likely still read floppies... This happens on some R32s. Other than the solutions others have offered, the only way to repair the laptop is with a new board.