My laptop harddrive went out on me today, and unfortunately my laptop is no longer under warranty, so I'm faced with the double task of A) Seeing if I can get the little bit of data that was not yet backed up off of it, and B) replacing it. I went to the manufacturer website to see about getting a replacement from them, but it was going to cost $400! My question is this: are laptop harddrives pretty much like tower harddrives in that they are standard sizes and I don't neccesarilly need a drive from the manufacturer? I looked through google, and I saw hints towards this, but I just want to be sure. The specs from the manufacturer are as follow:
40.0GB ATA-100 EIDE hard disk drive - 4,200 RPM, 2.5-inch form factor, 9.5mm height
The thing that bothers me is the "form factor." It's an HP laptop, but the drive from the factory is Toshiba. Any help will be greatly appreciatted!
Thanks, Josh
I believe there are 3 sizes of laptop hard drives, the main difference is their thickness, and the amount of power they draw. Search pricewatch.com. I saw a 80G 4200RPM, toshiba drive, 2.5"x9.5mm, for $112, from memorylabs.com...under details "for ..... hewlett packard"
Matt
On 12/30/05, Josh Charles josh.charles@gmail.com wrote:
My laptop harddrive went out on me today, and unfortunately my laptop is no longer under warranty, so I'm faced with the double task of A) Seeing if I can get the little bit of data that was not yet backed up off of it, and B) replacing it. I went to the manufacturer website to see about getting a replacement from them, but it was going to cost $400! My question is this: are laptop harddrives pretty much like tower harddrives in that they are standard sizes and I don't neccesarilly need a drive from the manufacturer? I looked through google, and I saw hints towards this, but I just want to be sure. The specs from the manufacturer are as follow:
40.0GB ATA-100 EIDE hard disk drive - 4,200 RPM, 2.5-inch form factor, 9.5mm height
The thing that bothers me is the "form factor." It's an HP laptop, but the drive from the factory is Toshiba. Any help will be greatly appreciatted!
Thanks, Josh _______________________________________________ Kclug mailing list Kclug@kclug.org http://kclug.org/mailman/listinfo/kclug
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Any laptop of the right thinkness and ATA speed should be fine. There shouldn't be any real reason to look for HP specific drives as it seems it takes a fairly standard 9.5mm drive. Faster spindle speeds will help performance, but at the expense of battery draw and heat. If it's one of those hot P4 monsters, I'd be a tad wary of using a faster/hotter drive than spec. Otherwise, if it's a Pentium M, then the heat output should be less worrysome.
On 12/30/05, crash3m crash3m@gmail.com wrote:
I believe there are 3 sizes of laptop hard drives, the main difference is their thickness, and the amount of power they draw. Search pricewatch.com. I saw a 80G 4200RPM, toshiba drive, 2.5"x9.5mm, for $112, from memorylabs.com...under details "for ..... hewlett packard"
Matt
They're pretty much standardized, but be careful with Compaq/HP stuff... Apparently (or so I hear), they've done some pretty evil and/or stupid stuff before... This is hearsay, but apparently Compaq designed a (desktop) system in such a way that using anything but their official replacement power supply in it would fry its motherboard and the power supply-- and if you used the power supply for that model in another computer, the same. So, as a result, using either that particular power supply or that particular motherboard with another motherboard/p.s. would result in fried equipment. All the connectors were standard.
Yep, I've heard both Compaq and Dell have used ATX plugs with non-standard pinouts. As for HDD some makers put a very basic BIOS on the mobo and the rest on a special partition of the HDD. Usually you can find a floppy that will create it on a new HDD, but it's a pain. I haven't heard of any thing much past early P1s that did this, so anything using a 4GB+ HDD stock is probably safe.
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Jon Pruente -
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