Hard drive died.

Hard drive pooped out on me in my laptop. I can get one on ebay pretty cheap, but is this one I can just toss in my laptop? Or is it only for an external case? Can I buy a larger than stock drive, I think it’s currently 120gb, can I do 250gb? Are there any other important features to pay attention to so that it doesn’t suck, like the rpm speed or anything?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-250GB-DV2000-DV6000-DV9000-Laptop-Hard-Drive-HDD-/200599192384?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2eb4a4c340

After I get it fixed up, do you suggest loading it with windows 7? I have vista now and am indifferent about it. I use the computer for school and internet surfing. Nothing too intense.

I went from vista to 7 and it is totally worth it, I felt the same about vista but once you make the change you realize how shitty it really was.

Any Sata 2.5" laptop hard drive will work. I would go with a western digital drive like this www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136314 if your laptop drive is in some kind of “cage” then just undo the screws, and replace it with the new drive.

really vista vs seven is all prefrence, play with new laptops at best buy and see what you think of seven.

Good recommendation. I’ll grab one of those.

When the hard drive shit the bed, I reformatted but didn’t realize it wiped everything out. (I’m not a computer guy whatsoever) So I reformatted and it turned on, then I realized all my stuff was gone. Can I get any of that back or did the reformat write over it all? It was basically my pictures and music so it’s not the end of the world or even something I’d pay more than $50-$100 for, but if I can do it cheaply I would.

Hard drive data service centers would have to get your stuff back their is no 3rd party software or anyway to rescue data once it’s completely reformatted (assuming that’s what you did) I think the cost is about $250 for a data center to rescue your media

Eh, that’s not worth it. Thanks though.

When looking at these hard drives, is the cache the same as ram? More cache = more faster?

easus data recovery is your best bet without sending it to a data recovery place. download.cnet.com/Easeus-Data-Recovery-Wizard/3000-2248_4-10880816.html

Do I install the program on my computer or do I install it on my girlfriends computer and have mine hooked up as a slave?

hook the drive up to her computer as a slave.

Depends on the damage and what they have to do. Plus what they can recover. We recently had to send a drive out and it was $1800 to recover some morons quickbooks files. Not even kidding. 8/
Backup early because recovery really isn’t an option for end users.

How old is your laptop? Most laptop drives nowadays are SATA, but some cheaper older ones might still have PATA. If you pull out your laptop drive and see two rows of small pins, then it’s PATA. Otherwise, if there are two side-by-side connector slots, its SATA.

(just in case)

true, I assumed that his was sata because the ebay link is sata, but that could not be true.

holy crap! thats freggin insane, its easier for them to have a file server with a raid that auto backup everything, some people are just lazy

It was a network user…don’t even get me started. We use Retrospect and backup EVERY workstation client every night. The windows users are almost all on the domain and should be using roaming profile and then we just backup the server. That would be too logical though. LOL. It’s political and everything proper is an uphill battle. 8/

This user was getting “not backed up” errors for months and never told us. Yet somehow it was our fault when their drive died and they weren’t backed up.

LOL, whenever something like that happens to me I say “Oh well, you could always just grab them from your backups”…“oh well I don’t have any”…Must not be that important then huh?

Lmao that’s funny!

Download recuva on the laptop and run it. It may not recover all files and if even if there recovered they may be corrupt, but hey its free. As for the drive I personally would go with a Seagate (better drives that fail less often) they come with a 2 year warranty also if it does fail. Run a 5400rpm unless your computer came with 7200, the higher rpms can kill battery life.

I also second EaseUS Data Recovery. As long as the hard drive spins up and can be read, that program works like a charm.