Has anyone replaced a laptop Hard-disk?

[Big.Wayne]

Greetings!

I am trying to patch up an old Fujitsu laptop (PIII 800MHz - 512MB Ram - 20GB Hard-disk) but seem to have hit a problem. I believe the hard-disk is on its way out as I cant get it to format, just errors out at about 19%.

I see that there are plenty of laptop hard-disks for sale now and just wondered if anybody here has replaced one of these before?

I'm not sure where the disk is located within the laptop and also how hard is it to disconnect etc? I'm hoping its a relatively easy job (straight swap etc). As far as I can see the chipset used is an INTEL BX and as far as I can remember that can handle disk sizes up to 120GB right? although I will probably buy the cheapest/smallest disk I can source at overclockers.co.uk

current choice:

Western Digital Scorpio 40GB WD400VE 2.5" 8MB Cache HDD - OEM (HD-040-WD)

Price: £32.95 (£38.72 Including VAT at 17.5%)

Thanks in advanced for any help, I guess in the meantime I will take the screwdriver to the Laptop and see whats hiding underneath the various panels!

 

[Big.Wayne]

So far so good!

Hi all,

thanks a lot for the helpful replies (and reassurance on how easy it is). Well so far I seem to have got lucky, just two screws on the underneath release a panel and there it is, really easy!

Above:Knackered old PIII(m)800MHz, not to bad looking though.

Above:The small compartment (Top right) hides the 2.5" HDD. The large compartment (Top left) is where the battery should fit.

Above: Take off the lid (2 screws) lift out the small silver box, then slide out disk from silver box.

Above: There she is, the source of the problem (or so I believe). Now to choose a suitable replacement drive, kinda leaning towards a Samsung. .