New hard drive.

[offerman]

Hi There, I`m new to this board and would appreciate any help, I have a laptop from a friend who`s asked me to look at it for her. It doesn`t appear to have a system running on it, maybe she formatted it or something. When i try and load an Xp disk, it starts to set up, then says, windows couldn`t continue to install as the hard drive is corrupt.
Without getting an adapter to transfer the HDD to my pc and trying to formatt it from there, my question is, could i just tell her to buy a new HDD and i can do a straight swap with the broken one?? Is it that simple to just swap new to old housing?Her Laptop is less than 2 years old!!

Many thanks for any help.

[panboy]

You should be able to Replace the HDD pretty Easily , but first you should make sure that it is the Hard Drive that Broken and not some other major problem

if you can Get you hands on one of those laptop HDD connectors and try it on a computer. if not

you'll need to know the model of the Laptop and Hard Drive to make sure you get the Right parts, post them up here and some of the people more familiar with laptops will be sure to help.

as far as i know laptop hard drives are pretty Standard, but theres always a Few Black Sheep

[offerman]

Thanks for your reply, The make of the laptop is a Fujitsu Siemens Computers XP.
If i was to buy a device to connect the hard drive from the laptop to my pc would this be compatable with most HDD so if other people asked me for help I could test there`s aswell?

[panboy]

If you have the Entire Model Number of the Laptop could you post it Fujitsu Siemens have made Quite a Few

As far as i know most laptop Drives have the Same Interface, but there are a Few Non-standard ones

If you can Take it out, and Read off the Model Number, we can Look it up and Tell you if its all Good, ill properly only be online for a bout an hour more but there a plenty of other people on the Forum who might help you out , if there so inclined

Remeber always be Carefull

[offerman]

I am quite sure it is the HDD that is broken, BUT i`m open to suggestions on how to see if its anything else.
I checked the boot order of the Bios and that is ok.

[offerman]

Ok, will do apprentice, i`ll try and get that posted within the next 10mins.

[offerman]

Ok, here are the numbers.

100278185 rev c

The next numbers are next to barcodes on the drive

100281579

then another bar coded number
c04973

Hope this helps you to identify.

Thanks

[offerman]

Just found another number on the reverse of the drive if this helps,

Model, ST 94019A

[panboy]

Ok, here are the numbers.

100278185 rev c

The next numbers are next to barcodes on the drive

100281579

then another bar coded number
c04973

Hope this helps you to identify.

Thanks

100278185 rev c I'm Sorry bu i think this is the Serial Number, not the Model Number .. model Numbers are usually a Set of Capital Letters Followed by a number Eg: EM-5210 Thats the number of my desk top in my Office, and the same go for the HDD numbers you gave

[offerman]

Just found another number on the reverse of the drive if this helps,
 
Model, ST 94019A

[unlovedwarrior]

Just found another number on the reverse of the drive if this helps,

Model, ST 94019A

isnt this the model # panboy?

[panboy]

That look like one alright, Sorry go hung up working... after all i dont get paid to help people ^.^

Any ill look that up , and see if its standard

[offerman]

Panboy, Any help is much appreciated, so thanks for the free advice.

Is there anything i could do to see if the problem lies with something else other than the hard drive??

[squirrel]

swap HDs with another machine. see if the HD works in the other machine.  see ifthe other HD works in your machine.

[unlovedwarrior]

u can try resetting the bios? maybe that might help.. ummm try unplugging the power soucre from the hdd and waitng 30 secs then plugging it back in then try to turn it on. tr yone at a time, if panboy says that might help, the resetting of  the bios might, unless the hdd is dead then u'll just need to get a new one