# rebuild a laptop hard drive?



## ransomluv (Jul 3, 2010)

hey i was curious as to if it was possible to rebuild or salavage the hard drive for my laptop.  dell inspiron e1505. and what type of processors would fit my laptop


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## Syradact (Jul 3, 2010)

If your hard drive dies, you have limited options. Easiest thing to do is _replace it with a new one_, format/partition it, and reinstall your operating system. Recovery CDs won't work for that, though; you need the real deal. Or, you can pay a hard drive recovery service to try to retrieve your files for you. I can't see a regular home user having any files THAT important to go to such an extreme (unless the service was cheap and affordable).

Hard drives are assembled in clean rooms and are very complicated devices so you can't fix it yourself. Are you sure the hard drive has really died? Does it make knocking noises, anything like that? Does your BIOS tell you a boot disk cannot be found or something? Maybe the master boot record needs a repair, or there is data corruption and you need to format/partition and reinstall. You can search the web for instructions on how to do any of these things.

I have heard that some folks put their (bagged) hard drive in the freezer to try unstick the arm that reads the magnetic disc(s) inside to access their data for a limited time. The link above has some interesting info in the comments. Please exercise caution if you decide to try this method, and search for a guide to show you how it's done.


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## Runefox (Jul 3, 2010)

Generally, you won't be able to replace the processor in a laptop, or at least, not without major effort. The big problem is getting the thing apart to do it. That and the fact that the machine is four years old and probably won't take any newer processors. Your best bet is really to just buy a new one.

As for the hard drive, there's that above, yeah, but somehow I get the feeling your drive isn't broken, just that you want to remove it from the laptop and get files from it. If that's true, you'll be delighted to know that it's actually pretty simple, but the exact removal instructions differ from laptop to laptop, so I couldn't really tell you specifically. You'll likely need an adaptor to plug the drive into another computer - Cheap 2.5" external enclosures tend to do the trick pretty nicely.


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## ToeClaws (Jul 3, 2010)

Aye - Rune and Syradact have already covered the realities of what you wanted to do.  To further add to them, should you want to replace your laptop's hard drive, you can, but you'll have to figure out first what type of drive it is.  4 years ago was a very transitional time in laptops where some has IDE drives and some had SATA drives.  If yours is IDE, then it's a bit harder to find drives for it nowadays.  They are still sold, mind you, but there are only so many sizes available and you HAVE to make sure that your laptop is capable of accepting one of those sizes.  If it's SATA, then you'll have an easier time of it.

As Rune pointed out, the processor is not usually easy to upgrade, and at the age of your laptop, the only places you'll likely even _find_ such a processor is e-bay.  I would caution against this since in most cases even if you could find one, and even if you were knowledgeable on how to disassemble the laptop to the degree to which to replace it, the power gains would be very small in the end.

Your best bet for increased performance is as much RAM as your laptop can take, and a new/fast hard drive.  For example, I'm writing this on a 6 year old laptop which I put to maximum memory and a hard drive from late 2009 and this thing is dramatically faster than it was when new.


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## ransomluv (Jul 3, 2010)

Runefox said:


> Generally, you won't be able to replace the processor in a laptop, or at least, not without major effort. The big problem is getting the thing apart to do it. That and the fact that the machine is four years old and probably won't take any newer processors. Your best bet is really to just buy a new one.
> 
> As for the hard drive, there's that above, yeah, but somehow I get the feeling your drive isn't broken, just that you want to remove it from the laptop and get files from it. If that's true, you'll be delighted to know that it's actually pretty simple, but the exact removal instructions differ from laptop to laptop, so I couldn't really tell you specifically. You'll likely need an adaptor to plug the drive into another computer - Cheap 2.5" external enclosures tend to do the trick pretty nicely.


nope it is actually broken it wont boot with it


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