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.
You might just have a damaged or corrupt boot partition. What does the screen show when you turn it on? If it says something like "No operating system" that's better news than if it says "No disk drive found".
When you remove the old HD, you definitely want to connect it to another PC via a USB or eSATA adapter ( Newegg.com and Cyberguys.com are good sources for these) and try to browse the disk. If you get to that point and find your music and e-book files...it's quite likely that they are recoverable.
Also, if your HDD was divided into multiple partitions rather than all on C:, it's a good sign for possible recovery.
Most times when a HD ‘dies’ it’s just a bad boot sector, failure to load the OS, etc. The drive can be plugged into a USB 2.5 SATA drive adaptor (search for it), and plugged into another computer to access its data.
The drive will not recognize permissions of the User connecting to it so you’ll have to R-click and change the security settings to take ownership of all the files and/or give Everyone Full Control. This procedure can also be searched for a walk-through on how to do it.
First see if you can connect the drive via USB and read it. You could also use an SATA 2.5” external drive enclosure to put the drive in to read from it. But the bare USB reader is more functional as it usually has 3.5” and PATA connectors too.
I was visiting a friend recently whose daughter had owned a laptop which was no longer of value to her. She wanted him to destroy it so that she could preserve her privacy.
We attempted to discover how to access the hard drive in the laptop but removing a bunch of screws didn't do the job. Finally, he ended up using a hand-held band saw to cut the thing open. In a couple of seconds we had the hard drive and cut it in half also. I think she's safe now.
I got the dreaded “Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media” message. My hard drive is “missing” — “AHCI Port 0 Device error” it says.
Generally speaking, it’s not major surgery. But every laptop is different in it disassembly procedures. See if you can find an Asus maintenance manual. It should describe the process to you..
Other than that, most laptop SATA drives are pretty similar.
Translation:
From the same place that you get your new drive from...get a USB enclosure to house your old one. When you have restored your laptop...plug in the old drive to the laptop and see if Windows can access it. If so, drag and drop your personal data from old to new. Done.
If not, buy a new, large drive to place in your new USB enclosure and use it for backups and images of your laptop, etc.
You might do better to look on line for a USB to HDMI Adapter. The terminus of the adapter might be a DVI port, to which you can simply hook up a DVI to HDMI cable, and then on to your TV monitor’s HDMI input.
Sorry - ignore my previous post - for a second I thought you were talking about the HDMI output. For an internal Hard Drive contact, it’s a PITA to solder around a busted circuit board, but I have had some luck using home-made wire “jumpers” soldered directly to the board contacts, and then connected to a new input. Of course, I usually work on radios....
I gave up soldering motherboards years ago when surface mount technology came along.
Don’t you still have to solder the contacts to the surface of the board (but not through it) if you wish to replace a component?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.