External HD as Laptop Drive

Vinny-Chase

Hey guys,
Laptop hard drive gave up the ghost the other night. Have tried everything. Managed to get what ever files I needed off it but can't get a boot out of it at all. Tried everything I can think of.

Need to get a new HD ASAP. Was thinking of just getting an external HD and removing the sata drive and installing onto that.

I have a Toshiba Satellite L300. I need the HD ASAP so will have to do bricks and mortar. Nearest shops are PC World & Harvey Normans. Anything I should look out for? Or specific speed I should be looking at? I see HN have a 320gb HD for 39 quid on special.

Appreciate your help guys, need to get it in the next few hours.
Yours with baited breath

marco_polo

Vinny-Chase wrote: »

Hey guys,
Laptop hard drive gave up the ghost the other night. Have tried everything. Managed to get what ever files I needed off it but can't get a boot out of it at all. Tried everything I can think of.

Need to get a new HD ASAP. Was thinking of just getting an external HD and removing the sata drive and installing onto that.

I have a Toshiba Satellite L300. I need the HD ASAP so will have to do bricks and mortar. Nearest shops are PC World & Harvey Normans. Anything I should look out for? Or specific speed I should be looking at? I see HN have a 320gb HD for 39 quid on special.

Appreciate your help guys, need to get it in the next few hours.
Yours with baited breath

They may have a few internal 2.5" drives which would save you a little hastle.

If you must get an external make sure it is a portable 2.5" drive and not a desktop external 3.5" drive. You can tell because it will be much thinner and smaller and the 3.5" ones have a seperate AC power adaptor as well where as portable 2.5" drives are USB powered only.

Be warned that a standard laptop drive is 9mm thick and there is the potential (slim) risk that the portable may contain a non standard 12.5mm drive which only very few laptops models use, unfortunately I doubt that there will be that much information detail on the box . And if you rip it apart and it doesn't fit you will have a hard time returning it . Usually the 12.5mm drive will have a very high capacity (500Gb+ so if you stick to sizes below that, say like the 320Gb you were looking at, it should be safe enough)

As for 5400 vs 7200 rpm drives the faster one will perform a little bit better but the slower one will be a little easier on the battery so that trade off is up to you. In normal usage there wouldn't be a hugely noticable difference either way TBH.

Mr Benevolent

The L300 uses a standard 2.5" HDD. I should know, I just parted one out. Feckin' multivoltage chargers wrecked it...