Toshiba Laptop HDD Replacement

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Hi all:

My Grandmother-in-Law gave me her old laptop. It's a Toshiba model l675d-s7052. It appears to be in very good shape, doesn't have a lot of wear and holy Moses the screen on this thing is huge. Came to me laden with stock Toshiba bloatware and a ton of ad-filled casual games and other junk, would barely run once it was booted up. I installed a fresh copy of Win7 on it and all seemed well until I attempted to install my Fitbit software onto the machine last night and it took several minutes to start the installer. Once it started, the progress bar moved as normal. Shortly after the install completed I got an error message from Windows that basically stated that the HDD was failing and to back up stuff now. I ran a CHKDSK scheduled at boot, rebooted it and went to bed. When I woke up this morning, it had finished (I presume) and rebooted into Win7 with the same "HDD failing" dialog box. I ran the CHKDSK again and will find out from my wife if it says anything different, but I'm doubting it. I was hoping it could isolate some bad sectors and would be fine but its seeming like the drive will die soon, anyway.

Looking ahead I started to look at replacement options and I'm wondering if a smaller SSD isn't a better choice for reliability/speed,etc. The computer has a 500gb HDD but I have a 2TB network HDD and I probably won't even fill up 1/4 of 500gb. I found this: 250GB SSD for about the same price as a comparable HDD.

Any thoughts? Is a 2.5" SATA notebook drive a 2.5" SATA notebook drive for all intents and purposes? I can't for the life of me find a part number for the stock drive to compare.
 
NewEgg is running SSD sales almost daily until Christmas.
A 500GB was on shock sale recently for less than 40.
And yes, SSD and laptop is a perfect combination.
 
Can you please post a link to the 500gb NewEgg SSD ? My application would be for the boot drive for a 4 or 6 core AMD PC .

Thanks for the info , :)
 
SSD is very cheap this year.

Just go to Newegg or Amazon and you will get the best choices.

I am assuming you know how to access and replace the HDD which is in most cases is accessible from the bottom.
Some, you have to take off the keyboard side of the laptop.
 
Honestly man, I bought a 500gb SSD a few years ago and I wouldn't buy anything less than a 1tb now. They are cheap now and 250 is not enough unless all you do is browse and never download anything.
 
Go with a 250GB SSD in the 2.5 inch format and that laptop will be faster than when it was brand new. I highly doubt your grandmother will fill up 250gbs worth of disk space. These SSDs can be had from about $30-40, dirt cheap for such a great performance bump.

I recently installed a 250gb SSD in my daughter's win10 laptop. The original 1tb HDD wasn't failing or anything, but it was slow to boot up and I have three users accounts on it. With all three logged in the HDD was getting sluggish.
It's the best and cheapest upgrade one can do to a computer, especially an older one.
 
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I'm keeping the computer for my own use, I will have to check my current daily-use laptop and see how much space I've used. I do have a network 2TB drive for mass storage.

So, it seems like for the most part, most SSDs of the same size and interface should be plug and play, yes?
 
About Newegg, I bought a CPU cooler from them for my desktop several months ago, since then they mailed me two separate letters and an email that they had their data breached and my information, including credit card number and the CCV on the back may have been part of the breach.

Avoid them!
 
I would put a 250 gig SSD in, and upgrade the memory to 8 gigs....

You need two 4 gig memory chips, both slots are occupied with 2 gig...

I usually use Samsung 860 EVO drives...
 
Originally Posted by mattwithcats
I would put a 250 gig SSD in, and upgrade the memory to 8 gigs....

You need two 4 gig memory chips, both slots are occupied with 2 gig...

I usually use Samsung 860 EVO drives...



This would be my wishlist of tasks to get this PC up and running to a reasonable standard. I would think about upgrading the battery also, but I rarely run on battery power on any of my laptops. Any reccomendations on brand/clock speed for the RAM? And how much they run?
 
I would do an SSD upgrade first, you will be surprised how much if a performance gain you will get. Then you can decide about other upgrades.

With memory, you pretty much have to stick to what your laptop came with, just lagrer memory size. So if it came with DDR2, you cannot upgrade to DDR3. And those old memory sticks don't actually get cheaper as they're being phased out.
 
Just in case, there are different size 2.5" SSDs. Historically, they were 9.5mm thick, but more recently, they're 7mm thick. Odds are good that your drive is 9.5mm, any 2.5" SSD should work. I only found this out when I went to replace the HDD in my laptop and found out it was a 7mm drive, and the 9.5mm drive I purchased wouldn't fit.
 
YES!!! my wifes old 2009 laptop was getting too slow to use. I bought a 180 gig SSD a few years ago and never looked back. Its still usable today for basic internet and office application stuff on win 10. She hasn't filled it up yet in 5 years.

Windows only takes about 20-30 gig (absurd but true) programs are generally less than 1 gig except for large photo or engineering packages. 240Gig should be fine. 500 gig will be more than fine.

There is no speed increase for going to the bigger SSD. they are equally fast.
 
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Well, I swear that 250GB I posted in my original post was only about $40 the other day but it shows at $49 now. There's a comparable 240GB for $38 (different series, probably a tad slower) that I will probably get. This is it. I haven't gotten the computer to do a full successful in-depth/surface scan but the SMART report has a couple red flags on it. One for sector reallocation and another one I can't remember.

Now I just need to figure out the mounting and see if the thickness will make a difference. Both of the Crucial drives I looked at are 7mm, I need to check the mounting and see if it will make a difference in this laptop. I'm guessing if screws are involved the thinner drive won't matter?
 
Originally Posted by KrisZ
Consider that HDD done for and back it up ASAP, if you have anything on there worth backing up. Don't do any more scans, defrags or software repairs until you back it up, because it might totally fail at any point now.


There's nothing to back up, I had just done a clean install of Win7. I think a new SSD will breathe some life into this old machine.
 
Originally Posted by Ifixyawata
Originally Posted by KrisZ
Consider that HDD done for and back it up ASAP, if you have anything on there worth backing up. Don't do any more scans, defrags or software repairs until you back it up, because it might totally fail at any point now.


There's nothing to back up, I had just done a clean install of Win7. I think a new SSD will breathe some life into this old machine.


Perfect, you will not believe the difference.

Also, take out the magnets from that failed HDD, these are very strong and can come in handy. Many bitogers use them as oil pan magnets.
 
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