Posted on 08/31/2011 7:05:15 AM PDT by Keltik
A few days ago my (Asus) laptop HD crashed.
I'm not very cyber-savvy, but I'm thinking about trying to replace it myself.
The Hard drive: 500 GB SATA - 5400 rpm. I can get one of these at New Egg for $40. Is it one size fits all?
Is replacing a HD a very difficult procedure? I have the Recovery Disks I burned -- can I reinstall Windows with them?
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Suggest you do a web search on "(Mfr and model number) replace hard drive" and see what the geek sites have to say. If you are lucky you'll find a series of pictures or even a youtube showing you how to do it.
Another good place to go is the Newegg user reviews on your exact machine, if it has a fair number of reviews someone will be sure to have commented on HDD replacement problems if any.
Your SATA laptop hard drive is SATA - one size does fit all. Just make sure you are getting a laptop drive. I would suggest that you give some consideration into a larger hard drive (750 Gig, 1 Terabyte, ect) as the price difference isn’t all that great. You just can’t have too much room.
Also, some drives (such as Western Digital) have grades of hard drives in a family.
Green - good for low power, like used in an external drive. I wouldn’t suggest this as your boot drive; as their performance and reliability are ‘fair’.
Blue - economy level for a boot drive. 3 year warranty, mediocure read/write speed.
Black - ~$10 premium over the Blue; 5 year warranty, higher reliability (still below enterprize, but at les than 1/2 the price of an enterprise drive), maximum performance.
Your recovery disks were a very good idea, you shouldn’t have much problem at all.
Any 2.5” SATA drive should slide right in. And I think your recovery disks should work too, but I have never tried that.
The plug-in slot for the HD on my Toshiba cracked and a piece broke off making it impossible to keep a solid connection for the HD contacts. Is there a 'soldering' process which can replace the plug on the motherboard so I can get the HD to make solid contact again?
Once you figure that out, the rest is easy.
You can probably find instructions online. What is the model number of your ASUS.
Not a biggie. Any SATA 2.5” 3GB/s should do. Unless the old one mechanically blew you should be able to connect the old one to pull of your user data after the rebuild. You’ll have to take Ownership of the old drive’s partitions to access all the data.
I’ve always had good luck with Tiger Direct. I’ve had to replace several hard discs in the last few years (different laptops) and got good prices and support there.
It’s an easy fix any more.
Mine is a K60I-RBBBR05
Be sure you have the right specs before ordering.
Laptop HDs come in 2.5” and 3.5”
5400 RPM and 7200 RPM [the latter has faster access].
Also determine the SATA specification, if any.
PC Wizard is a free program that reveals a signficant amount of information about your computer and components.
http://www.cpuid.com/softwares/pc-wizard.html
It is easy. You may need a small screwdriver.
“Unless the old one mechanically blew you should be able to connect the old one to pull of your user data after the rebuild. You’ll have to take Ownership of the old drive’s partitions to access all the data.”
Uh... What?
It would be great if I could save the data — lots of music and ebooks on my old HD
If you Google the make and model of your laptop with the keywords "hard drive replacement" you will almost always come up with the instructions.
A lot of people make the mistake of removing all the screws from the back of their laptop to get the case open. In most cases, you only need to remove a few screws to access the section you need. The less screws you remove, the better. Otherwise you could have a real mess on your hands.
It will certainly have instructions on replacing the hard drive. My HP laptop manual did.
Also, check Youtube.
It has many how2 tutorial videos for various activities.
Search for your computer model or a closely related on.
Now you’re above my pay grade, sorry. I do a lot of tinkering inside PC’s, but I wouldn’t try to solder a motherboard myself.
It makes for a very easy return if there are incompatibility issues.
If you didn’t fill up your old hard drive, maybe you should consider a SSD. A solid state drive. They are more expensive but they are much faster and it won’t fail again due to physical shock or heat.
Most people are dollar conscience but once you go SSD, you won’t want to go back to spinning platters.
Comparison:
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