Can anybody help me to find alternative hard drive for fujitsu siemens amilo pro v2030. It has got a samsung hm040hi drive in , but it is dying rapidly. It is for my little girl 8 yrs old so does not have to be anything fancy.
The lap top is approx 5yrs old.
Any help would be fantastic as I am getting pestered to death.
Thanks to anybody who can help.
Regard, Rob.

Rob, March 2011

Wow! - I even have a SMART disk on my machine -
The free utility "Speccy" tells me about it...

01 Read Error Rate 100 (100 worst) Data 0000000000
02 Throughput Performance 105 (105) Data 00000011E5
03 Spin-Up Time 198 (198) Data 0000000001
04 Start/Stop Count 097 (097) Data 000000159F
05 Reallocated Sectors Count 100 (100) Data 0000000000
07 Seek Error Rate 100 (100) Data 0000000000
08 Seek Time Performance 122 (122) Data 0000000027
09 Power-On Hours (POH) 068 (068) Data 00000037E6
0A Spin Retry Count 100 (100) Data 0000000000
0C Device Power Cycle Count 097 (097) Data 0000001577
BF G-sense error rate 099 (099) Data 0000000002
C0 Power-off Retract Count 100 (100) Data 0000000042
C1 Load/Unload Cycle Count 079 (079) Data 0000035620
C2 Temperature 166 (166) Data 0000080021
C4 Reallocation Event Count 100 (100) Data 0000000002
C5 Current Pending Sector Count 100 (100) Data 0000000000
C6 Uncorrectable Sector Count 100 (100) Data 0000000000
C7 UltraDMA CRC Error Count 200 (200) Data 0000000000
Temperature 33 °C
Temperature Range ok (less than 50 °C)
Status Good

Peccavi, March 2011

Thanks T - I had sold disk drives since the early 1990s in the trade and had not heard of SMART technology - we never sold on the basis of it and people didn't buy on the basis of it - nevertheless - I found a Wikipedia article about it - most interesting...

As a regular computer user - daily since about 1973 - I have never experienced a SMART message - or even known that one might one day arrive.

I assume it to be a system manager speciality area.

Thanks again - learning every day...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.

Peccavi, March 2011

You're way out of date peccavi.

Since the 1990s hard disks have had SMART. SMART warns one of impending failure - before it happens!

To the OP try to get a copy of Norton Ghost or a similar utility to make an image of the hard disk which you can then restore it to the new disk.

BTW DO NOT get Symantec Ghost. Norton and Symantec are the same company but the two products are DIFFERENT.

T, March 2011

The drive you mention is a 5400rpm 40GB SATA 2.5" and people are selling them on the Internet for prices between £19 and £45...

If you replace the drive you will have to rebuild the machine's operating system - for that you will need the OS Media. You will lose any application programmes and device drivers you may have added over time.

"Dying Rapidly" is an interesting phrase - disks tend to die instantly and stop working. You do not say what causes you to suspect the disk as being bad - the symptoms of the failure.

Peccavi, March 2011