Studio 1555 Hard Drive Help Needed

It appears that my Studio 1555 500 GB hard drive has gone kaput on me and I need to replace it.

Looking at my specs it looks like my hard drive has an IDE interface. Only IDE hard drive on the Dell site is a refurbished replacement of my drive for about $150.

With IDE hard drives being difficult to find what are my options? Is there a dealer out there that is still selling these drives?

Please Help!

Thanks.

 

What no, the Studio 1555 is a 2.5" 9.5mm SATA drive, adunno where you are getting the IDE part from.

 

I opened the case this morning for closer examination and it is indeed a SATA drive.

I got that it was an IDE drive by looking at my build specs on Dell and there it claims it was IDE, never bothered to open the laptop case and look at it in person until this morning.

My next question is that am I going to be able to clone this drive at all? When I turn the laptop on it gets stuck on the Dell splash screen with about 2/3 rd of the blue bar loaded. When the hard drive is removed I can get passed the Dell splash screen so it certainly looks like the hard drive is bad.

Thanks for the help!

 

Hi Unoriginal Name,

Before you purchase a replacement hard drive, I would request you to please try these steps:

If you get to see the Dell logo screen you should be able to boot the system in safe mode and also run the hard drive diagnostics. (Hit the F8 key on Dell logo screen to select Safe mode or hit the F12 key to run the Diagnostics).

Please make a note of any error codes or messages. This will help us isolate the actual cause.

Thanks & Regards
Dell_Satya_P

Dell Social Media Responder
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I have tried that but neither F8 nor F12 do anything when pressed.

 

Hi,

I would like to know what did you do finally? I am also facing a weird problem with my Studio 1555. Here is how it goes-

I was using Windows 8 since almost the past one month and it was running great, even better than Windows 7. And then just few days back I had opened quite many windows explorer windows and it the system suddenly started becoming very slow and unresponsive. Had to power shut it. Since then it just wont boot up. After I try around 20 times or so (unless the system is hot and the fan is revving) it luckily boots up sometime after trying hard. After that it works perfectly normally as it used to. I can also easily completely shutdown and switch between different OSs (Windows or Ubuntu) with no problem. If i start it again after a short break again then it works fine. But like if I try it again after few hours or the next day then I again face the same problem which freaks me out as I have all my engineering softwares and loads of data still.

I have tried to reconfigure and check the boot menu as well but it still doesnt help. When it doesnt boot, it also wont allow me to boot from any kind of bootable media also (CD/DVD or pendrive). It wont also allow me to run dell diagnostics.

When it doesnt boot, what happens is that the blue bar below the Dell logo takes longer to pass the 2/3 part. After that all I see is a BLACK SCREEN with a BLINKING CURSOR. I cant do anything here except Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart. I can use F2 or F12. After pressing F12 I get a list of available boot options but after selecting it I again have the black screen with blinking cursor only. I also tried resetting the BIOS but no difference. When it doesnt boot, the BIOS shows the SATA hdd as only [10]GB instead of the normal WDC WD5000BEVT (500GB) hdd! When I was able to boot luckily I even tried all diagnostic test like the Dell PC Doctor and I pass all tests as well.

I wish to find a solution ASAP as I am a student and need my laptop!

Thanks a lot!

 

Hey, I am having the same exact problem. I have a series of 3 beeps that go 15 total however when I start it. I suspect my hard drive died, but I have been reading it could be something else. Everything you said was similar in trying to start it or getting the cursor. I know it's been a few years, but what, if any, did you find out about your laptop? I hope to hear back from you. Thanks in advance.