Replacing a laptop hard drive

[Cephas]

Hi all,

My laptop's hard drive has been getting worse and worse in the past 2 months, eg. freezing for up to an hour at a time, heating up to painful temperatures until it overheats and crashes. But today she finally died and is completely unable to start.

A systems diagnostic gave error 2000-146, which apparently means hard drive failure. But everything's already backed up and safe, so I'm quite happy to just replace it.

But... I don't know how on earth I would go about doing that, or what I should be looking for when buying a new laptop hard drive, ie. what the difference is between a desktop HD and a laptop one.

So... Any advice?

 

[TheHawk]

Hey Partian Shot. A desktop drive is bigger and will generally have greater capacity. What is the make and model number of your laptop?. Do you have the Windows OS on a disk?

 

[Cephas]

Hi, it's a Dell 1747. And I don't think I do anymore.

 

[TheHawk]

According to the specs in the link below, your laptop has a Seagate drive, so I would get the same drive so you know it will work in your system. Is your dydtem still under waranty?.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Dell-Studio-1747-Notebook.24820.0.html

 

[Cephas]

My system? Sadly not, it's about 3-4 years old now.

So would these be the kind of things I'm looking for?
http://www.ebuyer.com/319639-seagate-1tb-barracuda-internal-hard-drive-oem-st1000dm003
http://www.ebuyer.com/480300-seagate-500gb-solid-state-hybrid-drive-sshd-st500lm000

 

[TheHawk]

So sorry for the delay, been under the weather the past few days. Your first link is for desktop drives,3.5"
I did see some reviews where some people were stating that your particular drive died after some months to a year of use. The link below shows similar Seagate drives, however, if you don't have a Windows OS disk, you should be able to get a replacement/recovery disk from Dell as your system might have had an OS recovery procedure to create a disk and/or had a hidden recovery partition on your disk drive. The appropriate drivers for your system will be on the Dell website (the Dell Service Tag makes it easy).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&N=100007605 50001305&IsNodeId=1&name=Seagate

 

[Cephas]

No need to apologize, I'm astounded you've helped so much already

This is the one I've gone for in the end:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seagate-500GB-Laptop-Solid-Hybrid/dp/B00B99JU5M

So, how might I go about getting a recovery disk from dell?

 

[TheHawk]

Sorry again, had a relapse. I had meant to put in this link in my previous post.

Dell Recovery Disks:

www.dell.com/support/diagnostics/us/en/19/nondiagnostichome