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Advice for a Novice Replacing Laptop Hard Drive?

Posted by Cliff on from the save-money-by-doing-it-yourself dept.

frugalRepairs asks: "The hard disk in my Sharp PC-MV12W laptop recently died. It gave me warning and I had everything backed up. It was out of warranty and the repair folks want an arm and a leg to fix it. I would like to replace the hard drive myself but I've never done anything like this before. It seems to me that I would just extract the old hard drive, note the physical measurements, purchase new hard drive, and install it. However, I'm expecting Mr. Murphy to visit me as soon as I open the case and would like some advice from Slashdot experts. Do I need special tools? Does the BIOS have special needs? Are all 2.5" laptop drives created equal?"

5 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. difficult? by rmull · · Score: 3, Insightful

    It doesn't have to be so hard... I had a thinkpad where you could remove the hard drive be removing just one screw, one that could be turned with a quarter actually. And my current compaq has a reasonable way to access the drive too, iirc.

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  2. Is this Slashdot? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Or is it Computing 101 for Dummies? Or are you too lazy to Google?

  3. Can't resist... by DarkDust · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So now Slashdot has turned into a helpdesk ? There goes the neighbourhood... ;-)

  4. Use Google! by EvilNutSack · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Has /. become the IT Support Centre for the world? Have we been outsourced?

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  5. Re:You have backups? Whats the issue? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The issue is a physically replacing the drive. RTFQ.

    So he's new to this. You were once too. Give him a break.