HP notebook hard drive replacement

[mechanicx]

I'm trying to fix my brother's laptop HP G60-535DX. I got the HP recovery disks but the PC will not boot into recovery. Windows loads file then it goes a grey screen and does nothing.

A ran a self test and it said the hard drive failed. I'm thinking I need to replace the hard drive obviously and not a bios issue or something. So what should I do to fix this as soon as possible? Go to the store and buy a hard drive? I actually never replaced a hard drive in a lap top before. Can I get any hard drive without an operating system and just use my recovery disks?

 

[javacontour]

If in doubt, pull the old drive and take it with you when you go to buy a new one to make sure you get something comparable.

I suspect with a recovery DVD, you can boot the DVD and it will prompt you to re-install everything.

There are probably some repair options you might try before you discard the drive. Someone with more Windows experience might be able to walk you through the repair install steps you can try before you get a new disk and install there.

It's possible that the OS is corrupt and a repair will correct it.

But it's hard to say from this vantage point on the interweb.

 

[dparm]

The self-test is probably querying SMART, which is the drive's built in health-checking/monitoring.

Just pull the drive and take it to your local computer parts store (TigerDirect, Microcenter, Best Buy).

 

[mechanicx]

The PC won't even boot up with the HP recovery disk in the DVD player. Windows loads file but it goes to a grey screen and then everything stops. I ran a hardware test in bios and it said the hard drive may be faulty.

Any tips on what I should do for the hard drive?

edit: OK, Dparm I think that's what I'll do.

 

[mechanicx]

I just don't want to buy a hard drive and it still not work but I don't know what else it could be or how else to test it

.

 

[javacontour]

Could spend some time getting a Linux ISO and checking if the laptop will boot that for a "test drive"

Does the laptop even attempt to boot the recovery disk? What is the boot order listed in the BIOS?

Is it possible it starts with the HDD and doesn't even try the DVD drive?

 

[OVERKILL]

Download the Ultimate Boot CD and run the hard drive test.

 

[javacontour]

+1, that's a good tool. It will test booting from the DVD drive AND let you check to see if you really have a failed/failing disk.

Good call.

Originally Posted By: OVERKILL
Download the Ultimate Boot CD and run the hard drive test.

 

[mechanicx]

I did try setting the DVD drive to be first in order of boot and it still does the same thing. That's what I don't get is why does it always try to load windows when it should be loading the recovery disk. I can hear the drive running.

 

[sxg6]

Sounds like theres a problem with the hard drive, and maybe the ram. I would test the ram next, and if that tested out ok I would install a new hard drive and go from there.

 

[Donald]

Pull the hard drive and boot, it will force it to the DVD player. Could you be trying to play a DVD in a CD player?

I bought a $10 or so adapter kit to allow me to attach bare harddrives to my working laptop via USB. I then use Crystal Disk Info to check the drive.

Its so much easier to deal with a problem harddrive when I can attach it to my working laptop.

 

[ag_ghost]

Originally Posted By: Donald
Pull the hard drive and boot, it will force it to the DVD player. Could you be trying to play a DVD in a CD player?

I bought a $10 or so adapter kit to allow me to attach bare harddrives to my working laptop via USB. I then use Crystal Disk Info to check the drive.

Its so much easier to deal with a problem harddrive when I can attach it to my working laptop.

+1 to the above. Try to read the drive from another PC if you can; maybe you can at least recover some of your data. If it is not cost-prohibitive, I try never to reimage a PC on top of the old drive unless I have to.

That system shipped with a standard SATA interface HDD.

If you still want to diagnose it in place, I assume you've seen this troubleshooting guide on the user guide page for this PC? http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c02876562.pdf

Finally, if you decide you need to test the RAM, download and burn a boot CD or DVD from http://www.memtest86.com/
Kevin

 

[PandaBear]

You should be able to boot from DVD/CD, that's a minimum requirement that the BIOS writer / motherboard developer cannot screw up, everyone along the line of work would get fired for that. Likely there's another bios setting you need to set to boot from DVD, or in the worst case disable the hard drive from the boot sequence.

If BIOS or SMART say the drive is bad, it is bad. You can "borrow" a drive from someone's old laptop (assume SATA). According to the laptop spec it came with a 5400rpm SATA drive, so stick in another 5400rpm or if you want speed, an SSD. 7200rpm drive may burn more power or heat up more, so if you want to keep things the same buy another 5400rpm.

Use the recovery CD/DVD to reinstall the image after you have a new drive in there. It should have a new OS on it in no time, but you will have to reinstall all the applications and your personal data again.

 

[javacontour]

To add to the above, if the drive is failing, but not completely failed, you may be able to recover some data. That's why $10-$20 spent on a USB to SATA adapter to connect the old disk to your laptop may be a worthy investment.

 

[mechanicx]

It turned out the hard drive was bad. I replaced the hard drive which is very easy to do.

I put in a Western Digital Black with the same capacity 320GB but I think it is a 7200 RPM. It has a 5 year warranty and was only a few dollars more than the WD Blue. For $57 I think it was a good choice. It's made in Malaysia instead of China like the original Toshiba HD.

There was nothing on the old hard drive to recover. My brother had just did a reformat a few days before because of trojans, then a day or two later the PC stopped working. So that's part of the reason I was concerned that maybe the hard drive wasn't really the problem and that he had maybe messed up the bios or something.

 

[PandaBear]

WD Black is higher grade, more reliable than Blue. BIOS setting cannot mess up a hard drive; the worst it can do is not "see" a hard drive or not boot from it. If a test says the hard drive is bad, it is from the internal controller of the hard drive that knows best, and it is final.

 

[mechanicx]

Yeah the diagnostics tests I ran in boot mode had said the memory was good and the hard drive was bad. But he had trojans and did a reformat and when it stopped working all together he started pressing the function keys during start up and had menus for 3 different bios selections coming up etc. Really my knowledge of PCs is limited and incomplete, so I wasn't sure how the bios function.

 

[PandaBear]

Originally Posted By: mechanicx
Yeah the diagnostics tests I ran in boot mode had said the memory was good and the hard drive was bad. But he had trojans and did a reformat and when it stopped working all together he started pressing the function keys during start up and had menus for 3 different bios selections coming up etc. Really my knowledge of PCs is limited and incomplete, so I wasn't sure how the bios function.


A lot of the damage was hidden until you try to write or read from it. Since most of the sectors on your hard drive was not being read/written all the time, you don't know until you access them in, common when you are doing a reformat/reinstall/scan disk/secure erase (writing 0s to all sectors)/etc.

 

[Bryankkkk]

Probably a toshiba piece of junk drive. Those are the worse drives these days. Hitachi also.

 

[mechanicx]

Yeah that was pretty much the case. The laptop was only 2 to 3 years old and hardly ever was used outside of the living room. I haven;t had the best of luck with Toshiba or HP products in general.

I guess PCs parts aren't like auto parts where the OE parts are beter than the aftermarket.

As an aside, I got the new better performing hard drive for under $60 with a +5 year expected life and it cost me about that much just to fill my tank up today. Something doesn't seem right about that.