Laptop Hard Drives

[Zorchenhimer]

The hard drive on my laptop is on its last leg, so I decided that I'm gonna buy a new one.  What manufacturer should I go with?  Oh, and I'm looking for a HDD that is about 100 or so gig.

[KnacK]

hitatchi and toshiba make most laptop drives and I have very good success with each.

Make sure that you get the specs for the current hdd and that the new one matches it. ( for example rpms )

CHeck to see if there is a bios flash to increase the capacity or type of hdd.

[Zorchenhimer]

So, you're saying that I need to get the exact same drive, right?  If that is the case, I might just order a replacement part from Dell.

[KnacK]

newegg for the drive, Dell will be too much.

[Zorchenhimer]

What is the difference between "SATA 3.0G/s" and "Serial ATA150"?  And how would I tell which one my dead drive is?

Edit:
Wait, isn't "Serial ATA150" the laptop version of a desktop IDE drive?

[KnacK]

sata = serial ata
ata150 is slower than a sata 3.0

You should be able to pull the hdd carrier from the laptop and check it.

btw - what makes you think the hdd is bad?
sata is not compatible with ide

[Zorchenhimer]

btw - what makes you think the hdd is bad?

• 50+ disk errors in the event viewer for one day
• extremely slow bootup (5+ minutes on the windows splash screen)
• extremely slow startup of normal programs

   Durring both of those, I can hear the disk having trouble reading.

• blue screen whilst trying to copy contents of an external hard drive to the laptop's (this happened last week)
• chkdsk finding numerous errors and freezing (freezing as in ~24 hours on the exact same screen)
• Linux unable to mount it due to bad sectors
• Failed diagnostics tests

There might be a few more reasons, but I think that will do.

Edit:
Oh, and it won't boot into windows now.  It just sits on the splash screen.

Re-Edit:
And the drive says "Serial ATA" on it.

[KnacK]

OK

Got a part number for the existing hdd?

[Zorchenhimer]

There are allot of number on the sticker, so to make things easy I just took a picture of it:

[KnacK]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2000150380+1035907918&name=Serial+ATA150

You should be able to select from any  of those drives.

[Zorchenhimer]

Awesome.  Thanks.