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Is it hard to replace a hard drive in a notebook?

post #1 of 6
4/29/07 at 10:24pm
Thread Starter 
A good friend asked if I could switch out his hard drive on his VAIO VGN-S460, since his other died. I've built my own desktop, but I have no experience with notebooks. Is this hard to do? Anything I need to be aware of or to consider?

Right now I'm thinking of putting in a Seagate 120 GB or something similar. Any advice is greatly appreciated! Thanks!
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post #2 of 6
4/30/07 at 12:35am
No, as long as you get the right one it's easy as taking off a screw or two and removing a little cover.
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post #3 of 6
4/30/07 at 1:32am
Some Sony Laptops require a bit more disassembly to get to the Hard drive than other Laptops. But you should do fine. Sometimes Sony puts the Laptop underneath the keyboard.
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post #4 of 6
4/30/07 at 3:23pm
Thread Starter 
OK, thanks you guys. One other question. Is there any easy way to confirm that it is a dead hard drive before trying to switch it out? I just got the notebook now, and after turning it on, it mentions that it can't detect an operating system and then stops. Trying to use the recovery disk results in a message that it can't detect the partitions and then it exits and restarts.

Is that enough of a confirmation that it's a dead hard drive?
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post #5 of 6
5/1/07 at 8:25pm
Thread Starter 
OK, I've gotten everything open, checking carefully for all screws, and I've taken out the old HDD and its bracket. I've switched the new HDD into the bracket, and I noticed that the old HDD (a Fujitsu) has a black sheet glued to the bottom of it. The new HDD doesn't have anything on the bottom, just the green paneling and metal parts.

So my question is: Is there any risk to installing the new HDD without a similar black sheet? What is the black sheet for? (Insulation? Protection from heat? I've heard these laptops have heat problems.)
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post #6 of 6
5/2/07 at 12:22am
Thread Starter 
I ended up switching the black sheet from the old one to the new one, and after installing the new HDD it's working fine. Thanks for the encouragement.
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