Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Location: The Frenchie Farm, Where We Grow 'em Big!
2,080 posts, read 6,934,255 times
Reputation: 1084
Advertisements
We have a two y.o. Toshiba Satellite that crashed. We retreived the files easily but our friend said we need a new hard drive (the "blue screen of death" was his diagnosis). We would like to know what numbers we should keep in mind. 7200 rpm/16GB, seek time, cache....it's all confusing. We use the laptop for documents, web searches, and music downloads. I hope the info helps!
Please don't say, "Get a Mac" Got one! It's used for the more important work projects,ie. photo, A&V, and the laptop PC is for the small stuff.
Unless your friend has a lot of experience, I'd question his diagnosis of "blue screen of death" = replace hard drive. A bad hard drive *can* cause BDoDs, but so can 100 other problems.
Anyway, the first decision when buying a new hard drive is to determine whether its IDE or SATA. A 2 year old computer probably has a SATA drive, but you never know. You'll need to find a service manual, product description, or someone who can recognize the interface of sight to help you determine which you need.
The rotational speed has a big impact on the speed of the drive but can also generate more heat, noise, and battery drain. There's a chance that installing a faster drive than what came in the computer could generate too much heat and kill itself or something else in the laptop. Laptops usually don't deal well with too much heat. Your old drive is probably 5400rpm unless its an expensive laptop.
I'm going to assume the "16GB" your wrote really should be 16MB as in the drive's cache size.
More cache will improve performance. The last decision is what capacity you wish to purchase. The safe choice is to just match whatever the old drive is or maybe a little bigger. All laptop drives are the same physical size so they'll all physically fit.
Here's a link to Newegg's laptop hard drives. I can't narrow it down any more without more information.
The hard drive had to be functioning (physically) in order for you to be able to retrieve the files. How did you retrieve them? If you took the drive out to do it, you can read the drive information on the label. I've seen laptops blue screen from a power surge in a USB port when an external hard disk is plugged in, and it can also be caused by excessive heat. Has anything changed on the laptop recently?
The hard drive had to be functioning (physically) in order for you to be able to retrieve the files. How did you retrieve them? If you took the drive out to do it, you can read the drive information on the label. I've seen laptops blue screen from a power surge in a USB port when an external hard disk is plugged in, and it can also be caused by excessive heat. Has anything changed on the laptop recently?
I think this might be my problem with my recent computer crash. The blue screen flashes so fast that I can't read anything on it before the computer reboots itself in an endless cycle. I tried taking the hard drive out and putting it into a case, but it doesn't seem to want to access it (from my desktop). Of course, I really need the info off of it, so any help is appreciated. This was from a Toshiba Satellite computer, about 5 years old. I had plugged in an external USB drive, and this is when it happened. I had been having problems with the USB port before (not working, very touchy). Thanks. Jamie
I am lost. The first post says "we retrieved the files easily", the last says "I really need the info of (sic) it". Which is it? This is important because if you retrieved files then the solution is entirely different (possibly) than if you cannot access the drive at all.
Do you have an original CD with the operating system on it? This is not a restore disk that puts the system back to "out of factory" condition, but a Windows CD that is plain vanilla. Even if a friend has one that is the same version (Home, Pro, Media) you can use it and put in your product code from your sticker when prompted.
I ask because it may be possible to run a "repair" on the drive from a Windows CD.
I think this might be my problem with my recent computer crash. The blue screen flashes so fast that I can't read anything on it before the computer reboots itself in an endless cycle. I tried taking the hard drive out and putting it into a case, but it doesn't seem to want to access it (from my desktop). Of course, I really need the info off of it, so any help is appreciated. This was from a Toshiba Satellite computer, about 5 years old. I had plugged in an external USB drive, and this is when it happened. I had been having problems with the USB port before (not working, very touchy). Thanks. Jamie
Start a new thread, don't post your problem in someone elses thread, this is called hijacking and is frowned upon.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
