My Hard Drive Failed!! Has anyone used another drive exactly the same model to replace parts?

Question

I am thinking of buying the exact model hard drive to replace among other things the electronic tablet on the drive.
Has any one here done it? Do you know of a website that will show how to replace the outer electronic tablet on a hard drive?

I DONT PLAN TO KEEP USING THE DRIVE. I JUST WANT TO GET IT GOING TO RECOVER MY INFORMATION AND THEN TRASH IT. LOVE YOU ALL.

Answer 1

Losing data on a hard drive is the worst nightmare of any computer owner. However, some hard drive problems can be easily fixed yourself by using easily available tools. I found the info at http://fixit.in useful

Answer 2

It can be done but it is difficult. Even if the drive is the same model there are often differences between drives produced at different times and they may not be compatible. The circuit board is usually not too difficult to swap but anything else requires specialist equipment. I have only done this once and that was with two drives from the same batch. The data was not very important but I wanted to try it. If the data was really important I would have sent the drive to a data recovery company rather than risk losing all the data.

Answer 3

For fifteen days. Depending on the laptop, and the specific arrangement between Microsoft and the laptop manufacturer, you may find that Windows will decide it's pirated. This is especially likely if the new laptop has some peripherals, say, a network card or video that is different from the original. There is a reasonable chance that if you call Microsoft and explain the situation they will consider it an upgrade to your original system and allow you to re-activate it. I've heard they are pretty liberal about this, but a whole new laptop sounds like it is stretching it. On the other hand, some corporate licenses don't require activation, and I suspect that might be true of some OEM versions, too.

Answer 4

You've got to be kidding. You're going to try to repair a failed hard drive with parts from a perfectly good one? Even if you succeed, you'll get an old drive with a new external tablet, and no guarantee the internals still work. Trying to crack the seal on the drive to fix internals would be a study in futility.

Sheez guy, recover the data on the old drive and throw it on the new one.

Answer 5

There is no way to fix a hard drive unless you know exactly where the problem on it is. If you start messing around you could only make the problem worse. If you need the data off get a professional service to do it.

Answer 6

Hi,

I would be very doubtfull about doing this, unless you are 100% sure of what the failure is.

The mean time between failure for hard drive components means that the likely failure will be part of the spinning media.

This part of the drive is not really servicable.

Unless there is a crucial reason for trying to repair this, just replace it. You will save yourself a lot of time and frustration.

hope this helps


Owen

Answer 7

If you only want the data from the failed hd, try putting it in the freezer for a couple of hours. Many times this will make a bad hd work for a short while

Answer 8

It's doable, as long as it's only the electronics that are bad.. If you open up the sealed part of the case you're just asking for problems...

it does have to be the same model.

Next time, back up your files..

Answer 9

I did it years ago. It took me 3 weeks 2 find the "how to do it" and 5 minutes to actually do it. You hook your CD Rom Cable to the new drive and while I can't remember the rest, I bet if you put the question to MicroSoft Knowledge Base there will be papers on how to do it.

Answer 10

buy a new hard drive you cheap skate