Dell hard drive failing - replace or buy a new one?

kittendothroar

Hi all, am not super with pc stuff but understand basics - I have a dell vostro 3700 laptop, it is roughly 2 years old..

Recently it has been running slow, and now is struggling to boot up I keep getting repeated error messages and after googling them it appears the hard drive is on its way out! I £30 and having a look around its around £60 for a new hard drive - the laptop belonged to my ex and has not cost me anything to buy, so am thinking now do I bother replacing hard drive or just buy a new laptop? Am interested in peoples thoughts! (I have a friend who can transfer over and install the hard drive so will cost me probably nothing other than about a tenner in petrol going to their house!)

closed

what messages

a 2 year old machine should have plenty of life left in it.

andy2004

what he said.

Depending on the above, I would personally buy a 2.5in sata hdd if its a sata, as you said it was only 2years old I would expect it to be.

according to novatech,
a hdd for the same size 250gb would be £31.98
for 320gb its £35.99
for 500gb its £40.99
see list/link
http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/harddrives-internal/2.5inchharddrive/?o=1

Richard_T_

if you havent already back up your data now, if the hard drive does die then you may loose everything on that laptop.

Pinkypants

Any usual sounds from the drive? Clicking, more whizzing etc......

I second back up the important stuff ASAP.

Also have a look at the SSD hard drives as a replacement, I recently got a new desktop with one in and it's super fast.

AHAR

Being a Dell you should be able to access some built-in hardware diagnostic tests from the boot menu - hit F12 when the Dell logo appears after turning on.

kittendothroar

thanks all - have been looking in shops at replacement drives ..

tried to do a backup this morning but 2nd disk failed....then tried a windows backup and I had to leave to go to a friends, so took it in the car with me but it turned itself off....! Going to try again later when I am at home..

ahar - I did run diagnostic tests, can't remember what error code was but I did copy it into google and it gave general opinion was the hard drive

Is annoying as doesn't do it everytime..is getting frustrating!

macman

Have you not checked the warranty? If 'roughly' two years old then it may well be still in a extended Dell warranty.
Put the service tag no. into the Dell support site and it will tell you instantly.
Crazy to buy a new laptop just because of drive failure.

KD19

Yes, worth swapping out the hard-drive for a new one. Just a quick check on Amazon, you can get a Dell Travelstar HD 320GB for £33 delivered.

A few other HD's around for similar price, a little more would get you a better HD if you need it.

andy2004

Personally I wouldnt go for the SSD as pinkypants suggested.
gb over price.
SSprices. 64gb for £44 sandisk / Crucial £56 and up
compare that with the prices for sata,
500gb for £41 and windows 7 would take 10-15gb on installation.
no contest really. especially if you like your music and movie on the go.
Would soon fill up 64gb.

securityguy

andy2004 wrote: »

Personally I wouldnt go for the SSD as pinkypants suggested.
gb over price.

Depends what you're doing. They're spiffy fast. A two year old laptop with an SSD will probably outperform anything new. And you can get 128GB SSDs for eighty quid these days.