Need help re: hard drive replacement

[ajt09]

Hey guys, have a bit of a situation going here and badly need some help. My SATA laptop hard drive is about to die on me, and need a bit of advice replacing it as I have NEVER been faced with this situation. The laptop I have is a Advent Roma 2001 (yeah I know-mistake), and I was wondering if the replacement HD has to be relevant to the manufacturar, or can I simply use any size/make? What I do know is the obvious-has to be 2.5 inch, and it uses a SATA make.

Also, is it worth upgrading from a SATA to an SSD? I heard the SSD's work faster, but may not last as long.

And finally, how do i go about installing the OS on the replacement HD, if I can't burn the required software to disc-my DVD drive is totalled aswell, so can't burn the boot up disk to DVD?

Help is much appreciated with this, as I have never done this sort of thing before, but I hear it's pretty straightforward.

And no I can't afford to replace the laptop-I simply cannot afford it, and I can't find the user manual anywhere and can't find it online

Cheers

Edit-just realised I've put this in wrong section too. Apologies

 

[Sean]

Also, is it worth upgrading from a SATA to an SSD? I heard the SSD's work faster, but may not last as long.

I would upgrade to an SSD if you can afford it. They are lightening fast. The only problem is that they are only small in size compared to regular HDD's.

 

[ajt09]

I would upgrade to an SSD if you can afford it. They are lightening fast. The only problem is that they are only small in size compared to regular HDD's.

Just had a look on Ebay and seen a 64gb for about £38. To be honest right now, I'm not too bothered about the storage capacity size. As long as it's got room for Windows, FM and WoW I'll be happy enough. Can always upgrade at a later date. If I got one, would I need anything extra like cables or anything-the laptop is pretty much ancient tbh

 

[Lee]

Just had a look on Ebay and seen a 64gb for about £38. To be honest right now, I'm not too bothered about the storage capacity size. As long as it's got room for Windows, FM and WoW I'll be happy enough. Can always upgrade at a later date. If I got one, would I need anything extra like cables or anything-the laptop is pretty much ancient tbh

I'd recommend this drive. Cheap, reliable, and most importantly it has good speeds. I use my SSD for Steam and WoW as well.

They use the same cables and connectors as a normal HDD and I think they're the same size (2.5") as normal laptop HDDs so they should just slot in.

 

[ajt09]

I'd recommend this drive. Cheap, reliable, and most importantly it has good speeds. I use my SSD for Steam and WoW as well.

They use the same cables and connectors as a normal HDD and I think they're the same size (2.5") as normal laptop HDDs so they should just slot in.

I'm actually on that site now lol. I think the main pain in the rear is going to be the formatting/re-installing of my OS. The drive is still holding out right now, but not sure for how much longer as I got the SMART message a few days ago. Any advice on the reformatting/reinstalling of the OS (Windows 7 HP is what I'm using right now)? I can't burn the reboot program to DVD as the player is being tempremental (installs some programmes but not all-just tried it). I read something about an external storage device (totally forgotten what it's called though) that can be used for data transfer, but as the drive is already faulty I'm not sure if the data will transfer

 

[Sean]

What I did when i bought my SSD was simply clone my existing hard drive contents onto the new SSD using a USB to SATA cable. Then simply take out the old HDD and put the new one in and it's like nothing has changed.

I did it on a Mac though so not sure if it's as easy to do on Windows.

 

[ajt09]

I see. Will have another look on the Windows forums about that (though at times it's like looking for a needle in a haystack lol).

Cheers guys

 

[ajt09]

Apologies for giving this a quick bump. It would appear that the hard drive has quite a few bad sectors after doing a HDDscan. Been browsing the net about wether or not I should go ahead and till clone, and the opinions are quite divided (or far too technical on some forums). With so many bad sectors would it be more worthwhile to just purchase a brand new drive and do a clean install of Windows 7 (current OS)?