topic Re: Replacing my hard drive/disk in NV109M in PCs & Accessories

Replacing my hard drive/disk in NV109M

zero5uk — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 00:06:41 GMT

Well well well. Its been over 4 years since i bought my beauty little laptop, and until now no major problems.

Recently i couldnt boot up due to an unmountable boot volume error message. I took it to my PC tech friend and after running CHKDISC or whatever it was he did, he said the hard drive has had it. Like any machine he said, some just pack in after time, especially in notebooks where a slight bang could cause malfunction. Or maybe iv just pounded my poor HD into the ground over the past 4 years (what is the average life span do you think guys?) I have to say my laptop has been quite labour intensive over the years.

My hard drive was partitioned (15gig on each). I suppose the upside is that i could upgrade and put in a bigger one. How big could i go? Id hope to keep the partition system. My mate has now taken my laptop away to see what he can salvage in terms of my lost data. The D drive is no problem he says, but C is not letting him in. He then said he has some special software that may allow him to salvage certain things on my C drive (like hopefully, the VAT folder for my familys business!)

Anyway, just wanted to know, if i have to choose a certain hard disk to replace with, and what limitations on size i may have. Also what id need to pay? I saw an internal 80gig HD on dabs for £35, but i dont know if that would do.

any comments welcome

Re: Replacing my hard drive/disk in NV109M

tonybeard — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 00:44:12 GMT

Anything that spins at 10,000 RPM an has an arm speeding up and down at 60 mph has to have a shelf life. A chinese hardware tech once told me that a hard disk has 30,000 hours of life. He was refering to a toshiba related HD. This was dependant on what you do with your HD. For example he refered to defragmentation as being a particulary wearing operation due to the amount of work the reader does moving sectors and rewriting them. Another thing was if you get unstable software or power failure. As far as the the size of your HD go for it as you can alway partition it up but even then common sense should dictate that your processors speed should limit your HD size to 80gig assuming you have around a 1 Ghz and 256RAM. I'm about to go to 100gig HD but I have a 3.06Ghz Pantie 4

Re: Replacing my hard drive/disk in NV109M

itbroker — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 06:56:13 GMT

May be this link can help you...

http://www.lacie.com/uk/

for the next step...

Re: Replacing my hard drive/disk in NV109M

zero5uk — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 12:49:40 GMT

Well my laptop is pent 4 1.6ghz, with 512 ram. From what my friend was saying, 80gig HD is probably the tops.

Interesting notes on HD lifespan. I didnt research the activities of the machine to realise what was good and bad for it, ie leaving overnight downloading etc obv wears the lad down.

Re: Replacing my hard drive/disk in NV109M

kee-lo_ — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 14:31:28 GMT

Hey Zero

Sorry to hear you've lost the hard disk
My only worry is that your BIOS might be so old and only allow 32GB hard disks (this is common for the time), hopefully Sony have released one since.

I would get another 30GB drive, and then get an external one for important data/backups and all your other media needs. Try to get a faster driver like 7,200RPM for best results

Best of luck with it!

Re: Replacing my hard drive/disk in NV109M

zero5uk — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 16:55:47 GMT

Hi Kee-lo, hope your well

Thanks for the information. I think my laptop must be a 2001 model, so not sure about the bios. So are you saying that even if i could have a bigger disk and the bios allowed it, your personal preference would be to still stick with the original 30gb. Can you explain a bit more on the whys of that please (i know you are busy!)

Good point on the rpm speed! Though hopefully that doesnt mean it will last 3 years instead of 4 the next time for spinning faster 😛

last thing - any ideas on how much for the HD replacement (exc labour)

cheers

Re: Replacing my hard drive/disk in NV109M

kee-lo_ — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 18:39:54 GMT

Hi Zero, yeah doing pretty well thanks

Well the BIOS in those days didn't have to deal with such huge disks, at the time if you had 5GB you were considered to have a big hard disk, but now hard disks go right the way through to 500GB, so the BIOS makers had to improve the handling so Windows could use the whole disk.

(Not sure if thats a good explaination, but you get the idea).

I guess the hard disk won't cost more than £100

Re: Replacing my hard drive/disk in NV109M

tonybeard — Tue, 26 Jul 2005 23:56:31 GMT

I gave my ancient Toshiba Tecra CDT to my brother in law and his teckie mate managed to upgrade (or fool) the bios to accept a 50 gig HD. I suggest you look into that. Partitioning it into 3 it worked at a simular speed when a 9 gig HD was onboard. If you can describe a 233MMX Pentie as 'speed' with 96 meg of RAM. I really like my bro in law LOL

Re: Replacing my hard drive/disk in NV109M

kee-lo_ — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 14:23:27 GMT

Yeah some people can fool their PCs with partitions

Re: Replacing my hard drive/disk in NV109M

febs — Wed, 27 Jul 2005 17:19:22 GMT

Lol Tony i don't know what it says on that picture but i can guess.

Re: Replacing my hard drive/disk in NV109M

zero5uk — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 09:44:41 GMT

Just an update on happenings.

Friend backed up my HD onto DVD's and used some special software for the broken C drive, which funnily enough got it to boot up when he then put the HD back. So im back working again......for now.

He said i should still get another HD and suggested a seagate (i know nothing about HD's) He said Samsung is a pile of.....and IBM/Hitachi were problematic, though Toshiba were ok, but Seagate were easily the best.

I picked up an 80gig 5,400rpm seagate momentus laptop drive for £70 off ebay, which seems a great price.

KEE-LO: i found a review of my laptop where someone said they had successfully replaced the HD with 60GB, so i assume 80 will be ok. I hope the seagate drive will partition - or is that a manual procedure?

Labour cost was £50 - seemed high for a mate, but seeing as he saved all my data, im not complaining. I dont have a problem in paying someone good money for such a specialised job.

Re: Replacing my hard drive/disk in NV109M

kee-lo_ — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 16:01:33 GMT

Your friend will probably sort it out if it did need partitioning.

Good luck

Re: Replacing my hard drive/disk in NV109M

ant1uk — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 19:21:24 GMT

i think thats quite cheap its not an easy job and im certain that vaio-link will cost loads more,