My thinkpad HD is making an awful grinding sound!

[hypermikem]

This is the first laptop I've owned, and of course it's a used one. Anyway today while using it, it just froze up on me, and then it would not respond to anything, even cntrl,alt,del. So I had to unplug the battery to get it to turn off. Then when I tried to turn it back on, the HD started to make a sound like if the needle in the HD was actually grinding into the disk. It sounded painfull!. Then it would attempt to post, and then gives me a "disk error". I am going to take a wild guess and say that my hard drive crashed in the truest sense? LOL ... Since my first inclination was to immediately try to find a replacement, I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions as to how to go about selecting a suitable replacement. It is a IBM thinkpad 600 series. I was thinking maybe I should remove the old one and get a part number first? What would you do? Thanks for the input.:blackeye:

 

[StormBringer]

Sounds like a head crash. This is when the head and the platters actually make contact. It can make a screaching or grinding sound. Only thing I can suggest about a replacement is to make sure it is the right size drive. Most of the time laptop HDDs are listed separately from the rest so it shouldn't be a problem finding one. If you wish to get an exact replacement then yes, you'd probably want the numbers off of it.

 

[Rick]

Don't feel too bad - Laptop HDDs are very unreliable from what I've seen.

I can say with 99.5% certainty that your HDD is gone.. It will have to be replaced. I say 99.5% because there is that occasional "miracle".

Anyhow, now is a good time to upgrade the size of your disk if you have ever been interested. My condolences for your lost data.

If you can tell me a little bit about your laptop.. CPU speed / type perhaps, then we can figure out what will be suitable to put in your laptop. The only worries you should have are how large of a drive your BIOS can recognize.

Any brand will work. When / If you remove the old HDD, you'll have to remove the connected on the bad HDD (IBM uses a special connector)..It just slides off.. Then put it on your new HDD and slide it in place. It's that simple.

You will, of course, have to install Windows etc.. If you have any questions, let me know.

 

[hypermikem]

Thanks guys.

Well, as I mentioned, it is a IBM Thinkpad 600x 26445-8PU to be precise. It had a 12g HD. I had lots of data on it, but nothing that can't be regenerated thank goodness. I started to look for the covering on the bottom where the HD resides, but looks like I'm gonna need a real small scewdriver. I am not sure if these types of HD are standardized, but i sure would like to find a HD of equal or greater size without going broke. I know how to Fdisk and format as well as install windows, so I'm ok there, but the HD business is sort of intimdating for the first time laptop owner. I've worked on PC's before, but laptops are sort of foreign to me. Any suggestions would be appreciated, as I don't want to be down for too long, as I travel alot.

 

[Rick]

Laptops aren't too hard to work on.. YOu just need small tools.

I've worked on many older IBMs, but only one as new as yours. The front panel usually comes off and the hard disk slides out.

Here's some instructions I found:
http://www.simpletech.com/support/guides/hdd/drives/IBM_ThinkPad_500_600_A_20_T20.pdf

If you look on IBM's website, they probably have a service guide that walks you through replacing parts.

You should be able to put up to 32GB in there.. So the sky is the limit.