Dropped my laptop

Well my laptop's power cable became entangled in the wheels of my daughter's pushchair without my noticing, and when I tried to move her I found my beloved hardware suddenly trying to blend in with the carpet. The power immediately went off, which I assume is a safety device. When I rebooted I didn't notice any problems, but I'd like advice on how to be sure. I tried fscking it but it warned me about fscking a mounted filesystem. Can I remount the root filesystem readonly, or should I just boot into Knoppix and do it from there?

No matter how the HD checks out, I wouldn't trust it too much. If some particles have flaked off inside it could be a while until the errors pop up, but pop up they will.

On the plus side, laptop HD are both small and designed for some amount of jarring. You might get lucky.

BTW, I recommend using SpinRite on the drive.