Noisy hard drive

[dave21478]

My poor old Acer laptop is getting on for 5 years of service now, and still runs well. However, every now and then, the normally very quiet hard drive gives a startlingly loud clunk.

I assume its on its way out?

I have everything important backed up on a usb drive, and have all the laptops original installation disks, so surely there should be no problem replacing the drive if/when it conks out? Am I limited in the size of the replacement drive,or can I put in any storage size I wish?

[Simon]

Upgrading should be no problem, but there aree a couple of things to consider.  Firstly what type of drive do you have, and secondly what are its physical dimensions.  What model is your laptop, we should be able to look this info up?

Regards

Simon

[Albert the InfoGipsy]

If the installation disks are for that specific machine they might throw a wobbly if the new HDD is not the same size as the old one. You might be able to fix this problem by partitioning the drive, but you would need to check.

It's possible, but not likely, that a 5 year old machine might have some hardware restriction on the maximum HDD size it will support. Try looking up your particular model here:

http://www.acersupport.com/notebook/

Also, quite honestly, it would be worth looking at the cost of a brand new laptop compared to just replacing the drive. Depending on your needs you can get faster, smaller, lighter, bigger-screened or just more stylish machines nowadays.

[Mr Coeur de Lion]

The hd had gone on two of my laptops, one a compaq, the other hp (although I think they're the same company anyway).

Bought both replacements on ebay and reinstalled windows using the original disks with no problem.

In fact I have used the same windows disks on both laptops as the original cd on my hp got badly scratched and was unusable.

R

[AnOther]

Drives are cheap so if you are otherwise happy with the laptop a failing HD is no reason at all to buy a new one.

The drive will undoubtedly be a 9.5mm parallel ATA

You can put in any size. Maximum you will find is 500gb but 320gb are more common and can be bought for around £50. The BIOS limitation Albert mentions will be irrelevant on a 5 year old machine.

I'm sure you will have no difficulty in restoring from recovery CD's - done this on every laptop I have owned over the last 8 years.

[dave21478]

Yes, restoring it from the discs is no problem, as I reformat this one every now and thenanyway  to clean it up, I was just wandering about the drive compatability.

Its a 15" widescreen, with over a gig of ram, so there is no point at all in changing the whole machine as the rest is more than adequate.

[Simon]

Make sure your laptop is no thicker than 9.5mm, and confirm whether you have a sata or ide interface; take out your existing drive measure it and look at its cable.  Look at ide and sata pictures on the web.  Provided you buy something of the same dimesions and interface you can put in any size you wish.

regards

Simon

[AnOther]

Wot I said then.

A 5 year old laptop will be 9.5mm PATA (IDE if you prefer) and if it's not I'll eat my hat [:D][:D][:D]

Better still Dave, if you buy a 9.5mm ATA drive and it doesn't fit I'll personally give you your money back - not kidding either !

Incidentally Simon, if Dave's laptop (drive) were 'thicker than 9.5mm' then it would be 12mm and a thinner 9.5mm drive would fit anyway [;-)]

[img]http://www.thebookyard.com/images/wd_hd.jpg[/img]