[dba-Tech] Hard Drive

Ed,

Laptop drives are dead simple to replace.  HOWEVER... remove the drive and
examine it before replacing it.  In the beginning... all laptop drives were
"IDE" drives (parallel interface) however my Dell has an SATA drive.  SATA
looks and in fact is exactly the same as the SATA connectors (power and
data) on the desktop SATA drives.  Laptop IDE drives are different (smaller
connector).

Your drive is not likely to be SATA but check just in case.  In any event,
once you figure that out, replacing it is just:

1) unscrew the screw(s) holding the drive into the laptop
2) slide it out 
3) You will probably have to take a little adapter off the existing drive /
put that adapter on the new drive
4) Slide the new one back in
5) Reinstall software.

Laptops are WAY easier than desktops because you don't have to get into the
guts of the machine to do cables.

BTW, if you have Windows Home Server (and have backed up your system) you
could just do a restore of a backup to get back up and running!

Good luck.


John W. Colby
Colby Consulting
www.ColbyConsulting.com 
-----Original Message-----
From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Tesiny, Ed
Sent: Monday, January 21, 2008 10:21 AM
To: dba-tech at databaseadvisors.com
Subject: [dba-Tech] Hard Drive

Good morning all,
This morning when I started my laptop, it went into a cycle of reboots.
   Booted it in safe mode and got a bunch of notices like
   Multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\windows\system32\BootVID.....others
plus
   a bunch of drivers.  When I manually turn it off, there's a little clink,
   mechanical sound.  I think the hard drive is hosed, any
   suggestions/confirmations/ sales on laptops.  Does it pay to buy a new
hard
   drive?  Never had one fail until today.
Ed

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