New hard drive for Sony laptop

[gadgetgeek]

Morning all. My old but faithful Sony laptop (FR315S) hard drive is playing up and I wish to replace it. It has a Hitachi DK23FA-60 but I am finding it difficult to source. Can another type/make of drive be used in its place? Are the all compatible? Thanks.

[rojash]

Yes.

[ChuckFickens]

yes, any 2.5 inch ATA hard drive will be OK (not serial ATA though)

[VHG]

>Are the all compatible?

Sort of.

Your old laptop may have a maximum Gigabyte memory size limit for a hard drive so dont buy one that is too big.

Also some laptop hard drives are thicker than others, so make sure any one you buy is the same thickness (along the thin edge) as your existing one.

[VHG]

The biggest problem you may have is getting Windows onto the new hard drive.

When you take the old one out (with Windows on it) and put the new one in it will be empty so it will not of course boot into Windows.

So you either need to get Windows on it using a recovery CD (did Sony supply one?) or you are going to have to do a fresh install of Windows.

And if you do a fresh install of Windows you are going to have to install all the drivers for graphics, sound etc or some of the components on the laptop may not work.

Also make sure you backup any important files from the OLD hard disk before you take it out.

[gadgetgeek]

Thank you one and all. Have a recovery disc supplied by Sony plus have managed to recover all I need off the old drive. Will take the old one out now and hunt around for a suitable replacement. Going to enjoy the sun first though! Thanks again.