Hard drive failed - compatible one?

Binxy

A few days ago my pooter broke. It boots up but thats it - it doesn't recognise the hard drive anymore (cue much weeping and wailing as nothing was backed up and we've lost EVERYTHING) :mad:

It's looking the best option to simply buy another one ourselves, rather than rely on the bl**dy useless insurance company to sort it.

How can we find a compatible one? It's a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 80GB ATA/133. I can't find exactly the same one, so how do we know which one will fit/is most suitable?

Help most appreciated!

irnbru_2

The ATA/133 is what yout looking for in a replacement.

What you have is an IDE drive.

JimArnold

Basically there are only two types of hard drive IDE and SATA.

Yours is an IDE one and any standard ide drive will fit - pick one from anywhere you like Novatech, Ebuyer(cheap but crap customer service) even PCWorld (if you use their on line ordering you can pick it up at on line prices)

Dearer ones are bigger and/or faster

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?MAX-P80
is pretty much the same as you have now or you can buy a bigger one Don't worry about exact match they'll all fit.

further thoughts - are you sure its the drive - could be other problems - on the good news front it is possible that while the old drive won't work as a boot up device it may still work as a slave. Sometimes drives just lose their file index and can be recovered if you can run chkdsk on them.

mr_fishbulb

You want an IDE one (ATA/133). It's sometimes called a parallel ATA, but just look for IDE and it will work. Make sure it's ATA/133 for it to be as quick as your old one.

And buy an external hard drive for backing up!

Binxy

mr_fishbulb wrote:

You want an IDE one (ATA/133). It's sometimes called a parallel ATA, but just look for IDE and it will work. Make sure it's ATA/133 for it to be as quick as your old one.

So we can buy bigger? And is the number for it to be bigger the "80GB" bit? (ie a 120GB one is twice as fast?)

mr_fishbulb wrote:

And buy an external hard drive for backing up!

That's rather a sore point between msyelf and Mr Binxy :mad: I'd been saying we should back up for months.

irnbru_2

Binxy wrote:

A few days ago my pooter broke. It boots up but thats it - it doesn't recognise the hard drive anymore (cue much weeping and wailing as nothing was backed up and we've lost EVERYTHING) :mad:

Don't give up on it yet though.

It could be dead or it could be just loose cabling.

Try a drive fitness test.

irnbru_2

Binxy wrote:

So we can buy bigger? And is the number for it to be bigger the "80GB" bit? (ie a 120GB one is twice as fast?)

Yes but 120GB has 50% more storage than 80GB.

When you replace it, partition it so that you separate the OS and your documents e.g. OS on C and documents on D (assuming Windows). That way if the OS is ever replaced your documents are safe.

mr_fishbulb

Binxy wrote:

So we can buy bigger? And is the number for it to be bigger the "80GB" bit? (ie a 120GB one is twice as fast?)

GB is the size (Gigabyte) but a larger one will not necesserally be faster.

I would say (and in no way am I trying to be insulting) that if you don't know what 80GB means then you don't need a hard drive bigger than 80GB. If there is only around £10 in it between 80 and 120GB then go for the 120 one, but if the price is any more then don't bother

Larger hard drives are generally for lots of digital photos, videos and music.

Binxy

mr_fishbulb wrote:

GB is the size (Gigabyte) but a larger one will not necesserally be faster.

I would say (and in no way am I trying to be insulting) that if you don't know what 80GB means then you don't need a hard drive bigger than 80GB. If there is only around £10 in it between 80 and 120GB then go for the 120 one, but if the price is any more then don't bother

Larger hard drives are generally for lots of digital photos, videos and music.

Thank you so much - your post had me :rotfl:

You're so right. At the price, it seems a 120GB will be much the same, so we'll try and find one of them.

moonrakerz

Could I make another suggestion ? Don't buy a new hard drive - buy TWO.

Use the second purely as a backup for all your docs, photos, gaming progs, useful progs you've downloaded off the net, etc,etc.
If your working drive dies you don't lose everything, also if you get a bad virus this backup should be clean - makes recovery a lot simpler.

Mark_LJ

Make sure its broken first! Just because it doesn't work it doesn't mean its broken.

When you say that the 'computer' can't see it are we saying its not identified in the bios?

If its still seen in the bios have you tried booting from the OS CD (assuming you're running XP) and trying to repair the install of windows.

Have you tried using a different cable such as the one from your optical drive. Sometimes the cables can become kinked, due to the heat inside the case and will stop working without any warning.

When you start up the PC can you feel the drive spinning?