Hard Drive
#12
03-22-2010, 07:49 AM
Grand Champion
The RAM modules he showed you will work just right. Same form factor and speed.
I wouldn't really think that a torched battery would have caused the issues you are seeing. You simply got your hands on a poor HD. Low quality HDs have a tendency to be made of low quality parts that simply can't handle the load that daily computing puts on the HD. Maybe it's a lazy read/write head, or maybe it's an issue with the platter. It could also be a containment that is just now rearing its ugly head.
Now, as far as replacement, you might find that this can have an appearance of being a royal headache or that you might think that you are in over your head. Lucky for you and being on an XP machine, if you can read, you can pretty much do this on your own.
One of the first things computer hardware does when you push that power button is it looks for an OS that it can boot. More advanced users that dual boot usually have an option screen, or they simply reorder in the bios before booting. Once the system has found an OS that it can boot from, it will load the kernal to the RAM and start the rest of the boot cycle.
Now, once you get all of your data off of the old machine and you have removed and inserted the new drive, you can begin the new OS install.
Ideally, I would say that you need a working XP install disk to use, but I don't know if you have the ability to get a hold of one. If you can, great! You can possibly make use of a system restore disk that came with your laptop. These can be tricky sometimes, and issues vary case to case.
In a simple manner, the following is a short write up how to install Windows XP on your machine. I will assume that you know how to access your bios....
With new Hd in, turn the system on and insert the XP installer disk.
You will more than likely have to power down and then power up the system again so that it will look for a bootable OS on your image drive. You might also have to go into the bios and change the boot order to CD/DVD-HD etc etc. You shouldn't have to since the motherboard and bios will continue down the boot order list until it finds something.
Once there, you will then follow the onscreen guides through the rest of the process. The only thing you have to really concern yourself with in the beginning is the license key and the partition/format options.
If you are using a new XP installer disk, you can type in the license key found on the genuine windows sticker on the bottom of your laptop, that is, if the numbers/letters have not worn off. If they have, you might have to contact your laptop's manufacturer to get the key. You could also just buy the OS again, but we are going for the lowest cost.
The partition manager/format options is the next step. All a partition is is a logical way of sectioning off HD space. This is nice for people that want to install multiple OSs on one drive or for people that want to have multiple places to store data. Generally, you can just leave the HD as one large data capacity. Once that is selected, then you go to format options. I wont go into detail here, but you want to select NTFS formatting, unless documentation that came with your new drive says differently.
The rest of the setup is pretty self explanatory, and to be honest, I cannot remember 100% of the way XP likes to ask for input.
After installation, you then need to go on the hunt for drivers, this would be for your Network Interface Card (NIC) both wired and wireless if equipped, Graphics Driver, Media Card Driver, Mouse/touchpad driver, media buttons dirver if you have a need for them- the volume controls and what not at the very front of the keyboard, and various other drivers that you may need. XP will find drivers for you with updates in case you forgot any.
Now you can start installing your programs back to the way you had them along with your files.
Honestly, this is just a short blabber of how to install XP, and I'm sure that others will improve on it. You could also save a lot of hassle by making a system image of your current drive and then flashing it over, but I think you might be needing a clean install too. You'll find that your system will be running a little quicker than it is now.
Oh, before I forget, I have not had near the experience with hardware that Eric and Jason has, but I believe that if a hard drive can with stand 80-100*C for months on end and still operate the way it's supposed to, that would be a winner in my book. Of course, I'm talking about the HD in my old laptop that has heat issues. It even has burn marks and metal discoloration on the outside of of the case/label. The brand of drive that I'm talking about would be the factory Western Digital drive in that laptop...
I wouldn't really think that a torched battery would have caused the issues you are seeing. You simply got your hands on a poor HD. Low quality HDs have a tendency to be made of low quality parts that simply can't handle the load that daily computing puts on the HD. Maybe it's a lazy read/write head, or maybe it's an issue with the platter. It could also be a containment that is just now rearing its ugly head.
Now, as far as replacement, you might find that this can have an appearance of being a royal headache or that you might think that you are in over your head. Lucky for you and being on an XP machine, if you can read, you can pretty much do this on your own.
One of the first things computer hardware does when you push that power button is it looks for an OS that it can boot. More advanced users that dual boot usually have an option screen, or they simply reorder in the bios before booting. Once the system has found an OS that it can boot from, it will load the kernal to the RAM and start the rest of the boot cycle.
Now, once you get all of your data off of the old machine and you have removed and inserted the new drive, you can begin the new OS install.
Ideally, I would say that you need a working XP install disk to use, but I don't know if you have the ability to get a hold of one. If you can, great! You can possibly make use of a system restore disk that came with your laptop. These can be tricky sometimes, and issues vary case to case.
In a simple manner, the following is a short write up how to install Windows XP on your machine. I will assume that you know how to access your bios....
With new Hd in, turn the system on and insert the XP installer disk.
You will more than likely have to power down and then power up the system again so that it will look for a bootable OS on your image drive. You might also have to go into the bios and change the boot order to CD/DVD-HD etc etc. You shouldn't have to since the motherboard and bios will continue down the boot order list until it finds something.
Once there, you will then follow the onscreen guides through the rest of the process. The only thing you have to really concern yourself with in the beginning is the license key and the partition/format options.
If you are using a new XP installer disk, you can type in the license key found on the genuine windows sticker on the bottom of your laptop, that is, if the numbers/letters have not worn off. If they have, you might have to contact your laptop's manufacturer to get the key. You could also just buy the OS again, but we are going for the lowest cost.
The partition manager/format options is the next step. All a partition is is a logical way of sectioning off HD space. This is nice for people that want to install multiple OSs on one drive or for people that want to have multiple places to store data. Generally, you can just leave the HD as one large data capacity. Once that is selected, then you go to format options. I wont go into detail here, but you want to select NTFS formatting, unless documentation that came with your new drive says differently.
The rest of the setup is pretty self explanatory, and to be honest, I cannot remember 100% of the way XP likes to ask for input.
After installation, you then need to go on the hunt for drivers, this would be for your Network Interface Card (NIC) both wired and wireless if equipped, Graphics Driver, Media Card Driver, Mouse/touchpad driver, media buttons dirver if you have a need for them- the volume controls and what not at the very front of the keyboard, and various other drivers that you may need. XP will find drivers for you with updates in case you forgot any.
Now you can start installing your programs back to the way you had them along with your files.
Honestly, this is just a short blabber of how to install XP, and I'm sure that others will improve on it. You could also save a lot of hassle by making a system image of your current drive and then flashing it over, but I think you might be needing a clean install too. You'll find that your system will be running a little quicker than it is now.
Oh, before I forget, I have not had near the experience with hardware that Eric and Jason has, but I believe that if a hard drive can with stand 80-100*C for months on end and still operate the way it's supposed to, that would be a winner in my book. Of course, I'm talking about the HD in my old laptop that has heat issues. It even has burn marks and metal discoloration on the outside of of the case/label. The brand of drive that I'm talking about would be the factory Western Digital drive in that laptop...
Last edited by Laramie1997; 03-22-2010 at 05:56 PM.
#14
03-22-2010, 06:15 PM
Maxtor drives were terrible, I agree. They actually are decent now-a-days, albeit hard to find. The reason? They are owned/manufactured by Seagate now. 
It may also be just plain bad luck. The most common hardware issue we see at the Geek Squad are laptop HDD failures. They are one of the last mechanic devices left in a laptop, when you add a super-fast spinning mechanical device to a relatively small, mobile platform that will be suffering all sorts of abuse (vibrations, temperature differences, moisture, etc.), you have a recipe for failure. All HDDs fail, laptop HDDs doubly so, its just a matter of time.
Steps:
1. Remove old HDD.
2. Install new HDD.
3. Follow these instructions. Ignore the whole "Press F6" steps starting in their step 2, your BIOs should treat SATA HDDs as an IDE device, making the F6 step unnecessary.
If any of those steps fail, pull out the new HDD, put in the old, and come back here on the forum for help.
I wouldn't really think that a torched battery would have caused the issues you are seeing. You simply got your hands on a poor HD. Low quality HDs have a tendency to be made of low quality parts that simply can't handle the load that daily computing puts on the HD. Maybe it's a lazy read/write head, or maybe it's an issue with the platter. It could also be a containment that is just now rearing its ugly head.
Steps:
1. Remove old HDD.
2. Install new HDD.
3. Follow these instructions. Ignore the whole "Press F6" steps starting in their step 2, your BIOs should treat SATA HDDs as an IDE device, making the F6 step unnecessary.
If any of those steps fail, pull out the new HDD, put in the old, and come back here on the forum for help.