relpacing hard-drive in a Sony Vaio notebook

dbrowne9212

2 year old Sony VAIO VGN21-E (out of warranty).

I've never replaced a laptop hard drive before but imagine it's not rocket science (i'm used to tinkering with PC internals). What do i look for when buying a new hard drive for the laptop? do i ned to pull the old one first and get some specs from it?

The laptop got a knock the other day and now i'm getting error messages at startup informing me that the hard drive is about to fail.

I can get as far as the option to boot into safe mode but the machine freezes again while starting windows"

Startup repair seems to run at first but then but never completes and seems to get stuck in a loop.

The PC wont even boot from my windows 7 installation disk, again it seems to be about to work at first but then freezes before it actually get as far as displaying any of the screens for the install/repair section.

So as far as i can see it looks like my hard drive is knackered and needs to be replaced. i have all my data backedup so no problem there.

I've tried to run spin-rite but it has also reported that the drive is basically beyond repair.

also... Any one any idea if there are other possible issues appart from/as well as the hard drive?

kind regards,

danny.

ejmaztec

Are there one or two letters missing from the model number? There are various VGN **21Es.

Voodu Child

If your laptop is only 2 years old you'll be after just a normal 2.5" SATA hard-drive. Just watch out and get a standard-height (9.5mm) one, as ive seen a few taller drives sold without any obvious warnings in some shops.

If your laptop got a knock, i'd try reseating the HDD and ram, just to make sure they hadn't been knocked out of place or something.

You can use a LiveCD (for example Ubuntu) if you want, to boot up without the hard-drive, and check that everything else is working okay.

CrinkElite

blah blah blah Spinrite at www.grc.com - DO IT!!

kaizersoze

CrinkElite wrote:

blah blah blah Spinrite at www.grc.com - DO IT!!

blah blah blah read his post again - DO IT!!

As Voodu said it's probably SATA if it's only 2 years old.

Changing the HD on most laptops is easy...except for Sony VAIOs. In most VAIO models the HD is buried inside the laptop casing and not accessible from the outside. It's usually underneath the palm rest, just to the left of the mouse pad.
It means that you have to turn the laptop upsidedown, remove the DVD drive, battery and all the screws. Then take the casing apart to get at it. There is also a hidden screw underneath the keyboard.

CrinkElite

kaizersoze wrote: »

blah blah blah read his post again - DO IT!!

As Voodu said it's probably SATA if it's only 2 years old.

Changing the HD on most laptops is easy...except for Sony VAIOs. In most VAIO models the HD is buried inside the laptop casing and not accessible from the outside. It's usually underneath the palm rest, just to the left of the mouse pad.
It means that you have to turn the laptop upsidedown, remove the DVD drive, battery and all the screws. Then take the casing apart to get at it. There is also a hidden screw underneath the keyboard.

Apologies hadn't had my coffee.

dbrowne9212

thats great guys, thanks for the advice.

the model number is vng n21-e and yeah it's going to be a nightmare to get at the hard drive, but what are you gonna do!

ejmaztec

dbrowne9212 wrote: »

thats great guys, thanks for the advice.

the model number is vng n21-e and yeah it's going to be a nightmare to get at the hard drive, but what are you gonna do!

Here's a pdf on what you're in for.:eek:

http://home.comcast.net/~nw_systems/vgnN.pdf

gman2k

Hey guys,what about replacing my laptop hard drive with a newer (bigger capacity) version, but keeping my OS, programmes etc???
Is there an easy way to copy/ clone the old hard drive to the new one?