Laptop HD is failing.

[Ken C.]

I have an HP DV8000 laptop and the hard drive is failing. I have 2 bays with one occupied by a Seagate 80 GB 5400 RPM HD. The second bay is empty and I want to add another HD to my unit before the other one dies completely. I would like something in the over 250G range. Price is not an issue. I can migrate everything over and clone the drive using Acronis True Image which will then be my main bootable drive. I cloned the old drive onto a 500G WD Ext. HD. What I would like to know is what the experts recommend as a good dependable drive. I have the caddy on order and I plan on using the second slot afterwards as a back up drive (another 80 gig drive, brand new).

 

[jim preston]

I don't know squat about computer hardware, but if anybody says "buy a Mac", I will personally eviscerate them.
Try HP customer support, or maybe talk to someone like Computer Troubleshooters. That's all the advice I can offer you.

 

[Ken C.]

I wouldn't call HP support if they were the last place on earth!

 

[Morrow]

Ken, how do you know the HD is failing? Is it physically damaged? If not, have you tried SpinRite? I've used SpinRite for years with great success.

 

[mikeal]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150380%201035907918&name=SATA%201.5Gb%2fs"]http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150380%201035907918&name=SATA%201.5Gb%2fs"]http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150380%201035907918&name=SATA%201.5Gb%2fs

Newegg is your friend.

Unless you are looking for specific characteristics, any of the top rated drives will be fine. Take the reviews there with a grain of salt and remember that any drive can fail out of the box. This one looks like it may be well suited.

I wouldn't depend on an onboard spare drive as a backup, especially on a laptop. The laptop is just as likely to be stolen or destroyed as it is to have a hard drive fail. I had a client bring his laptop to me after it had been run over by a bus... I would look at using your external hard drive in conjunction with an offsite backup service such as Mozy or Carbonite. I think Carbonite is $50 a year and is pretty well regarded.

Mike

 

[Ken C.]

I've decide to go with this drive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136279

I ordered 2 of them and an HD enclosure to use the second HD as a back up.

Now, when I clone the drive using the cloning software I should just be able to start where I left off with the old drive, correct?

I'll install the new HD in the second slot...

Open the cloning software...

Clone the old drive onto the new drive....

Remove old drive...and stick the new drive in it's place in first slot. Restart the laptop and I should be good to go.

Am I missing anything?

 

[jerrinfla]

You might want to call HP support regardless of their usefullness to see if they can at least provide you with some info about your laptop that does not seem to be all that easy to find with Google. I looked around a little bit and I suspect that your notebook's hard drive might be an ATA-6 or a PATA drive. If that is the case, the SATA-2 drive that you are interested in would not have proper cabling to plugt into it. Also make sure the external enclosure you want has the correct interface for your laptop - if you have a free USB port on the laptop but no external SATA drive, you want the external exclosure to have a USB out connector to connect it with the laptop.
Also, from a few of the links I looked at, you *might* have a 240 GB cap on the total amount of hard drive space that can be used internally. (Dictated by the BIOS used on the motherboard)