Laptop ?

[caveman74]

Does anyone how much it would cost to install a new hardrive in a laptop?

I just purchased a 60g for it and Bestbuy wants 150.00 for HD install and reinstall of OS.

[mdd5148]

What kind of laptop is it?

Should be super easy... (Unless it is a mac, some of those you have to crack open to get to the drives, and in that case it probably has everything covered under warranty) Most laptop hard drives can be accessed with a screwdriver, and then they slide right out.

After you remove the hard drive cover, just put whatever adapter if any found on the original hard drive on the new one and slide it into the computer and screw the thing back on.

As far as installing the OS, also super easy if you have the media (Windows I assume for most people). Just put in the CD, press a key to boot from CD and follow on screen prompts... simple.

[mdd5148]

But yea that sounds like a lot unless they are adding the price of the OS in there.

[Hondasi15]

Thats not a bad price...its not hard to do, its just very time consuming. I upgraded my HD and it was like a 4 hour job.. I had to make my recovery CD and install the hard drive and then run the recovery cd..I had like 5 recovery discs to go through, to reinstall the Operating System

[e60.deluxe]

installation into the laptop should be very easy. as a matter of fact, if you send your laptop in for warranty repair to dell or lenovo etc, they ask that you remove your HDD first and then put it in your self when you get the computer back.

reinstalling the OS..if you have the CDs that came with the computer still its basically just like following on screen instructions.

if your uncomfortable still, you can probably find a small, local area chain computer shop that who will charge much less than BB.

[mdd5148]

I work at a computer help desk on-campus... I guess I forget that time=money for real people, seeing as I get paid dirt. lol.

[Ryd1ZZ]

If you don't have any data to move from the old drive this will be very easy.

[e60.deluxe]

Originally Posted by mdd5148

I work at a computer help desk on-campus... I guess I forget that time=money for real people, seeing as I get paid dirt. lol.

this will take about 10 minutes to put in the HDD. the files transfer is more of a click a few things and go away and come back when its dont type of thing. $150 is too much. especially since its moslty teenage guys who just got their A+ who work at best buy and will probably look around your hard drive and probably F up and not copy some stuff and etc.

[e60.deluxe]

also ill add, for about $30 you can buy a piece of software that comes with a USB cable that plugs into the new hard drive and into your laptop. it will make a copy of your old drive onto the new one. then you switch them out and your ready to go.

[caveman74]

Well the problem is the HD is dead. So I have no way to install the OS to the HD. They will have to do it through USB on there server in order for it to work.

This is an HP laptop

[e60.deluxe]

do you have the CDs that came with your laptop? if you do, just run off the CDs.

[Cr8tive_leo]

Just install it yourself, I don't know how the bios is on an HP, it should ask you if you want to boot from cd if it can't find a boot partition on the drive, then just install your windows os from there.

Once you install the OS , you just need to install the drivers from your recovery cd's or your drivers cd.

Not worth $150 to do.

[caveman74]

But there are no drivers for the CD drive to boot the OS. I dont have a floppy either.

[Cr8tive_leo]

It will.
The Bios has a bootstrap to read the cd drive. You can get intot he bios and tell it to boot from cd, and it will go on from there.

I don't have a floppy on my Dell 1210, I installed a larger HD and just booted from CD directly to install a clean os on the new HD.

You can do it Luke.. trust your feelings, you must let go your concious self and act on instinct.. with the blast visor down, how am I suppose to see.. you can't ... blah blah blah... too many hours of Star wars when I was a kid...

[Yodums]

Hey caveman74,

They're asking way too much. Perhaps they're charging you by the hour, but the hard drive is easily accessed through the bottom of the notebook and the re-installation of Windows is primarily the program processing everything by itself. You're essentially paying the technician there big bucks to remove screws and press a few keys. If you've gone through many retrofits, then installing a new hard drive is easy as pie. I do technical support for Dell and my favourite thing to support is the laptops just because everything is so easy to explain and access.

Paste the model of the notebook here. We can use HP's website and browse for the service guide where it'll show you to remove and re-install the hard drive. It should also tell you the hot keys to press to get into the BIOS (system setup). Once we're in there, we can set the first boot device as the CD-ROM and take the installation from there. You don't need a driver to boot off of the CD-ROM. The driver is only a piece of software to be used within Windows, but in general a driver for a CD-ROM is never needed. The only updates a CD-ROM will ever have are firmware updates.

Well the problem is the HD is dead. So I have no way to install the OS to the HD. They will have to do it through USB on there server in order for it to work.

I hope that's not what they told you. It's very important the Windows installation is ran from your system. There's a step in the installation where it'll detect your system hardware - chipset, bridges, video card, etc. and automatically installs all the possible drivers for it. You should not be installing Windows on one system and transferring the hard drive to the other system for use.

Save yourself the $150 and just give it a shot. Then in the future you won't have to rely on overpriced services to save you. :)

By the way, Cr8tive_leo, where are you getting Luke? His name says Kevin!

[caveman74]

Thanks for all of the replys. I am going to tackle it this weekend. I have done plenty of desktops, but never a laptop.

[Yodums]

It should be a breeze. For the installation, just pay attention to the HP logo screen at the startup. In some corner it should tell you which function key to hit i.e. F2 to enter the BIOS and readjust the boot sequence in there. If HP has what I'm thinking, there may be a one time boot menu where you select the device to first boot i.e. the CD-ROM. That way everything remains unchanged, but for that one boot the CD-ROM boots first.

[caveman74]

Did it last night. Took 3 Min, 2 screws on the side and It slid out for the HD install and 30 for the OS.
Now I just bought an LCD inverter. Mine crapped out on me while I was loading Windows. Found one for $20.00 on Ebay. Thanks for all of the help

[Yodums]

Glad it worked out for the best. Coincidentally, I'm helping a customer remove some components from his notebook. :)