Laptop HDD

ovia · 3 Oct 2007 at 08:40

Hi all,

I am looking at a freinds laptop and believe the HDD has died.

Are all laptop hard drives interoperable with all laptops or are there unique connection types?

The current HDD has lots of pins in the back and a plastic connector type thing to adapt it to the correct connection to the laptop.

Thanks

Slackworth · 3 Oct 2007 at 08:45

It will either be IDE or SATA and probably fits in a caddy of some variety in the laptop.

rpstewart · 3 Oct 2007 at 09:11

ovia said:
Are all laptop hard drives interoperable with all laptops or are there unique connection types?

The current HDD has lots of pins in the back and a plastic connector type thing to adapt it to the correct connection to the laptop.

Thanks

Sounds like a standard 2.5" IDE drive so as long as you transfer the adapter you describe then any standard 2.5" IDE drive should be OK. How old is the machine & how big is the current drive? Just need to make sure the machine can cope with the capacity of a new drive, some older BIOSes struggle occasionally.

ovia · 3 Oct 2007 at 09:50

It is a IDE drive, not a SATA drive.

Im not sure how big the current drive is as i forgot to look at that. The laptop is about 4-5 years old so not new and is by Toshiba, will look at the model later when i get back.

I am looking at putting a 40 gig in for him. The other thing i am concerned about is the way it is held in place, it is currently screwed to the front of the laptop which slides out. Will need to find a drive with the same connection type for securing it tight.

Can take some photos of it when i get back later.

rpstewart · 3 Oct 2007 at 10:32

40Gb should be OK.

When you say it's screwed to the front of the laptop and slides out is there a section of the case attached to the short edge of the drive opposite the pins? A number of IBM Thinkpads are the same, the case section is screwed to the drive using the standard mounting holes which should be in the same place on all drives.

fobose · 3 Oct 2007 at 17:51

My old Digimate laptop had a strange looking case attached to the hard drive via screws and then there was a screw hole for attaching it securely to the laptop itself.

Just remove the additional casing if there is one and attach it to the new hard drive you put in the laptop.