replacement laptop HDD?

[MNuTz]

Hi all,

Im looking around for a replacement HDD for my mums laptop but i cant find any info on it. Laptop is a Toshiba Satellite Pro A10.

Can i just buy any HDD and fit it or will it have to go back to Toshiba to have one of theirs?

Need to know asap so i can get this sorted!

thanks

EDIT: Current HDD is a Toshiba MK3021GAS HDD2181 B
DC+5v 0.7A
30GB

Does the power rating make a difference? my friends got one that is rated at +5V 0.55A that is going spare!

also, are they all the same size?

 

[MNuTz]

tried a 100gb second hand drive that does work, however, when i push the power button the power light flashes twice and then stays on. Doesnt boot up at all. Manual says it means that the output voltage is abnormal!

take the HDD out and it works fine!

Any ideas how to get round this?

 

[MNuTz]

The difference in the specs is in current draw not voltage so I'm not sure why it would be reporting a voltage issue.

Have you tried it on the battery rather than AC?

its the same on both mate

EDIT: i has put the HDD in slightly over to one side. it boots up fine now.

however, knoppix isnt seeing the drive and im yet to try and find my XP disk to install it. Tried the rescue disk but for it to come up with the following msg.

Starting Windows 98 (although im sure its XP).....

Microsoft RAMDrive version 3.06 virtual disk C:
Disk size: 2,048k
Sector Size: 512 bytes
Allocation unit: 2 sectors
Directory entries: 64

TOSHIBA Enhanced-IDE CD/DVD-ROM Device Driver (ATAPI) Vsn 2.24
(other info not important)

MSCDEX Version 2.25
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp. 1986-1995. All Rights reserved.
Drive X: = Driver TOSCD001 unit 0

CDR101: Not ready reading drive X
Abort, Retry, Fail?Bad or missing XCOPY32.MOD
ERROR ! XCOPY TO RAMDRIVE FAILED !

So im back at square one really except i now know that the HDD isnt the problem!!