Is it OK to replace my hard disk drive myself?

[Andrea7]

I have a Vaio laptop, about 18 months old. Last week, after I knocked it (tripping over the lead) it froze up. I rebooted and got the message 'operating system not found'.

After looking at some answers on this forum (thank you!) I switched it on again and pressed F2 to access the BIOS and it said 'Hard disk: none' I tried this a few times over a few days and it always said the same.

I took the hard drive out and tried it in a hard drive dock, plugged into my old laptop via a USB. It does not detect the hard drive at all. I'm guessing from all this that I damaged the hard drive when I knocked the laptop.

I'm looking for some advice on what to do next please. Are there any drawbacks to me simply buying a replacement hard drive (I can buy the same make and model - a Seagate Momentus 5400.6 on line) and fitting it myself?

The current drive is 320GB but I thought if I'm going to replace it I'd buy a 500GB one (otherwise exactly the same model). I think I've read somewhere that I shouldn't buy bigger than a 500GB for a laptop but would appreciate feedback on that too.

Also, does anyone know the odds of getting the existing hard drive repaired? Recovering the stuff on it is not a major problem as I'd backed up most of my files to an external hard drive (though I'll lose some recent stuff), and I made all the recovery disks when I first got the laptop.

My main concern is more about whether to try to salvage something from the old hard disk or just buy a replacement.

Thanks

[rich912 · Accepted solution]

Hi Andrea7,

Unless you are prepared to pay big bucks to a data recovery company I would forget the old drive as a repair is not economic.

The replacement drive should be two platter Sata 2.5" x 9.5mm high. Max available storage on these was 500 GB but I believe larger storage is now available.

I assume you created your recovery disks as you will need these to reinstall the OS unless you intend to use a retail version of Windows.

Rich

[Andrea7]

Hi,

I just wanted to say thanks for your advice Rich. I've now bought and installed a new hard drive and was able to reload the operating system etc from my recovery disks so my Vaio is up and running again, good as new. I actually found it really straightforward to do thanks to the advice available on here. Much appreciated.

Andrea

[rich912]

You’re welcome Andrea. Pleased to hear that all is now well – time to think about regular backups

Rich