Dropped Acer 5920G Laptop, Help with Hard Drive Replacement

Hey guys,

I was wondering if I can get some help with my 5 questions! Thanks in advance!

I just dropped my Acer 5920G laptop the other day on a marble floor (the cords go caught underneath my wheelie chair and pulled the laptop off the table - It dropped upright, so the bottom hit the ground first) and have since experienced the following:

-Start Up would take forever (the screen with the green bars moving left and right for Vista)
-It would try to do a HD check and would freeze after so many Kbs
-It would work for 5 - 10 minutes when I skip the regular startup and then the programs I have open would be Not Responding (my mouse cursor would turn into the working circle and stay that way)
-(One time, it even BSOD'd on me)
-I hear ticking of the hard drive

It thus leads me to suspect, the drop had probably messed up the hard drive, as I opened the back and checked and seen that everything else was still secure

1.Is that a correct assumption?

The current 5920G Spec:
::Intel Core 2 Duo 1.5 GHz 2MB L2 Cache,
:: Mainboard - Intel 965M
:: Memory - 2048 MB, DDR2 PC5300 667Mhz SDRAM, max. 4096MB, 2x1024MB
:: Graphics adapter - NVIDIA Geforce 8600M GT - 256 MB GDDR2 VRAM
:: Harddisk - 120GB 4200rpm SATA (the manual doesn't specify if its 1.5Gb/s or 3.0G/bs - but for my replacement HD that shouldn't matter cuz they're cross compatible?)
::OS - Vista 32bit Home Premium

2.So do you guys believe it would be a good idea to spend $50-$60 on a new SATA HD (can't decide between 5400rpm or 7200rpm 160GB) to replace i instead of going out and buying a new laptop? , the 7200 rpm heat should still be safe to install right? don't want to get a fire or anything like that as the 5920G GPU does like to get hot (high 80s - 90s F)



And if I should buy the new HD as I still very much like my current laptop, I just need to unscrew the old HD and put in the new one without much trouble? (I've installed GFX cards on my desktop years ago but have not done any laptop work)


Finally, would it be a good idea to switch to Windows 7 x64 Home on my current spec, my Vista was starting up so slow and since im gonna do a clean install? Might as well?


Any help would be appreciated!

 

i would be nervous using a machine that took a fall that hard. for $500 nowadays, you can get a pretty sweet machine with windows 7. and it's christmas - you will find pretty good sales/deals now on laptops.

but im a fiend though. i can justify buying a new laptop with a million reasons.... lol

vista/windows 7 would run on your current setup but a little slow... usable but you will definitely notice the lag. i have windows 7 installed on a 1.6ghz tablet laptop with 512mb ram... it works but it's slow.

 

If you feel everything apart from the HDD is fine then you can try a new one (worst case you buy an external enclosure and have a portable one).

Any SATA drive will do - go for SATA 2 just in case - if your laptop were SATA 1 it would still be compatible.

5400rpm is slower but requires less electricity.
7200rpm is faster but some vibrate apparently.

You could also consider a larger HDD - the Scorpio Black goes up to 320GB if I remember correctly, and the Scorpio Blue goea above 500GB - this would be more useful should you decide to go the enclosure route - or you could replace the HDD in a new laptop once you buy another one.

 

I'd go for the 7200 RPM drive. It does in fact sound like your drive is toast, especially with the tick of death. If you can, try to pull any data you can off of it and get it out of there.

You are correct that the SATA speeds are backwards compatible.

A side note, 80 to 90F (if it is indeed farenheit) is quite cool for a GPU. Many idle well over 100, and on load can approach 200. The HDD will not affect the GPU or CPU core temperatures at all, and if you set a fire then you will have some serious thinking to do if you're ever going to use electronics again. lol.

You probably are going to have to do a clean install of windows, as I REALLY wouldn't trust cloning from that drive at this point. Whatever version you choose will be fine.

It should be as simple as unscrewing the old and plugging in the new, but as many know murphy's law applies here and often times makes things much more difficult. Just take your time, stay grounded (electrically, though emotionally helps too), and count your screws. But you probably already knew this from installing GPUs.

Edit- timesquaredesi beat me to it!

 

Haha, thanks for the feedback, I am leaning towards the 7200rpm now that you put all my fire concerns aside, Core 2 Duo with 2 Gb would be slower or faster with W7 x64 than W7 x32?

When you SATA 2 that means SATA 3.0Gb/s?

 

SATA 2 = SATA 3.0Gb/s, yepp

32Bit vs 64Bit - depends on what you do.
64Bit will only be faster in tasks that are data and CPU heavy....

See my signature to read a bit more about it

 

FallenONE,

I would definitely get the 7200 RPM HD. The new 2.5" Hitachi 7K500 is the new speed 'king' and would go a long way in making your entry level CPU tolerable.

See:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...1984&name=Hitachi Global Storage Technologies


For $90 you will not buy a better HD right now.


As for Win 7, again 100% green light from me - a noticeable performance gain over Vista.

See:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/windows-7-performance,2476.html


What I'm concerned about is the 64bit version you want to run on only 2GB of RAM. That I cannot recommend, as I see that as a backwards step in performance. With 4GB RAM no problem, but then the cost of your upgrades will need to be justified by the really low prices of some entry level systems too.

See this link that links to all my 7K500 upgrade related threads:

See:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=441674


What I would do now is leave the current notebook HD powered off until you can get your data off of it. This drive is dead and each time you use it may be the last.

One other thing (though I think you already did this) is to remove and re-seat the RAM modules as the fall may have jarred them loose and cause the computer to randomly give errors or even BSOD. Same for any other card too: wireless, modem or anything else that simply 'plugs' into the MB.

Make sure you have the power disconnected and the battery removed before you remove/reseat anything though.

Good luck.

 

thanks, I will definitely do the 7200rpm though for budget reasons I would probably just go with the Western Digital one,

I have a quick question about the long term outlook on my laptop. (I am quite satified with my Acer at the moment, though its just not portable enough)

There is this Lenovo 20%off deal that ends tomorrow and I can get a T400 for about 900 bucks. Hearing that these last a long time, should I bail on this HD replacement and just get a new notebook?

Would the Lenovo T400 deal right now be a better investment that say in 2011 when I need to goto med school and can get a better laptop then? Are there any new upcoming techonologies that would drastically improve the laptop performance and life in the span of 1.5 years and would still be affordable to me under 1000 dollars should I decide to hold off the Lenovo?

 

Don't buy the Lenovo... now!

In 2011, you will be able to get a much better computer, not only the $1,000 you're willing to spend would be better than today's $900 Lenovo (when considering performance per $$), But I'm sure even the $1,000 less what it might cost you today to upgrade your Acer so it's usable till then will get you a better computer.

Only buy when you need. When you buy, buy as much as you can afford.

Cheers!

 

Agreed

Technology advances a lot.
Sometimes its little steps, then its large steps.

And again, the HDD isn't lost - you buy a new laptop and an enclosure for the HDD and you can use it as an external.

 

u can get any hard drive as long as it is SATA and 2.5 inch... Try getting a SATA-2 drives which most drives are... stay away from Seagate ones, they fail a lot... any Western Digital or Hitachi one is good... Currently ther Hitachi 500 GB 7K500 drive is the fastest mobile drive and comes for $100... it gives about half the performance of an SSD so its worth it...

 

Sequential or random?
A harddrive tends to be outperformed by quite a lot by a SSD like the Intel ones.

 

I think I am going to buy the Western Digital Scorpio Black one
After looking at the benchmarks from Toms Hardware, it seems to do very reasonablely fast enough for my needs

I only need 160gb as I only have 2GB of ram, think im just gonna stay with vista 32 bit tho as Acer uses have been reporting freezing with Win7

Thanks guys, and thanks for telling me to back off from the Lenovo deal!

 

Glad you came to your senses!

Is the Scorpio Black that much less than the Hitachi 7K500?

The Scorpio Black is already 2 tech yrs. old while the Hitachi is 'now'.

Not only is it a smarter move to get the bigger drive (you were thinking of spending $900!), but it will also be faster, quieter, cooler and of much more use, time-wise than an 'okay for now' 160GB model is.

Of course, its your call. But mostly, peripherals, RAM modules, and HD's are like lenses in a camera kit; the body may change many times - but the lenses, if they're at a 'good' or 'great' level can still be used with newer and better camera bodies.

At $80 when I bought the Hitachi, nothing else compared $$/performance - with the holiday specials not quite over yet, you may be able to match that price, or even beat it?

I'll quote myself again (with a correction!):

Only buy when you need. When you do buy, buy as much as you can afford.

Cheers!