I have an insprion 8200. Lately (the last month or so) the harddrive would CLICK really lound.. it sounded like.. something rattling inside it. I would turn off the computer and it would be fine again for a week or so.

Today, After leaving for 30 mins, I come back and see on the screen a message something like "no internal drive found" so i attempt to restart the computer, it does it again.. i can hear the harddrive whining really high pitched when i put my ear near it.

So i took it out of the computer and let it cool down for a little bit, cleaned the pins, put it back in and still same thing.

Looked around on my other computer to make sure i went and bought the correct harddrive and after about 20 mins decided to try computer one more time.. it worked.. very hesitant to get past the "enter setup" screen...

Right now i am burning the important files on the computer incase it happens again....

Am i jumping the gun buying a harddrive at bestbuy today? Does it sound like this is actually a failure?

I have been wanting a 7200rpm harddrive for a while, but obviously would be able to find a better price online than at bestbuy etc...

What do you think?
maybe ill order the new harddrive off somewhere online anyways and hope this lasts the next week until i get it

Yep, it sounds like your HD is definately biting the dust. I suggest the 7k60, a 60GB 7200rpm model from Hitachi... which is now very affordable, as low as US$115 at Newegg:

http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_g...06/search=7k60

Stu

thanks man, stuff is recording now, please dont fail, please dont fail! lol

I could really care less about GB capacity (i have 18 now) and never get close to filling it.. so i may just go for a 20 or 30gb 7200..

thanks !

yeah clicking is really bad when it comes to hard drives, hope you get your stuff backed up

thing wouldnt burn CDs (3 failed) then i remembered my 6gb iriver that saved the day.. glad i went for a "larger" mp3 player!

im on the laptop now, hoping this thing stays alive until i get the new HD already ordered from newegg, lets hope for a wednesday delivery!

Im wondering how much of a performance increase ill notice, anything?

You'll notice quite a nice speed boost in heavy disk I/O applications, because that drive has both rotational speed advantages and greater areal density. It probably has a bigger cache at 8MB too, you'll love it

Stu

ok ok, one more question.. now that i am excited to receive and have to wait a few days...

when i put this harddrive in, it is just as if i had reformatted my current drive?

or do i put it in, start it up and "reformat" how i would normally reformat a harddrive?

lol, as you can see, i have NEVER put a new harddrive in anything..

TIA

OK then... it will come unformatted, which means you will have to format and install the OS. This is easy if you have the Windows XP CD (You should have, would have come with your system originally).

Basically, take out the old hard drive, carefully pull the pin adapter off it, and put it on the new hard drive. Slot the new hard drive in place, then boot it all up with the Windows CD in the media drive.

Press F12 as it boots and it will show you a boot menu, choose to boot from the CD. You will go through the standard Microsoft EULA and propaganda, etc... just accept it all. It will get you to a screen that asks you what partition you want to install it on, you'll just have one big block of unpartitioned space looking something like below. Select that:



Now it will ask you how you want to format the drive, use the full NTFS format:



Format will take a little while, and after it is done it will start installing Windows. This is self-explanatory as Microsoft has included on-screen instructions to guide you the whole way through. Good luck!

Stu

yup, i have the disks, and i know how to reformat, was just wondering about *new harddrives*

thanks

Oh OK, sorry I misread your post now I go back and read it again.

Yes, just like you would normally reformat a drive

Stu