M1530 hard drive died - now what?

The 250GB 5400rpm drive in my M1530 has just died. It was taking longer and longer to boot up, and has been giving me warnings after I boot up for the last couple of weeks. I managed to burn all my personal files to DVD before it completely gave up the ghost.

It's got to the stage now that half the time the BIOS can't find a drive to boot from, and when it does boot up I can't open any programs due to I/O read errors. I've taken it out and reseated it a couple of times to no avail. It's 100% on its way down the drain.

My Dell warranty ran out a couple of months ago, so I've decided to bite the bullet and upgrade it myself. I'm no newbie to this. I've upgraded / replaced motherboards on half a dozen laptops and replaced countless processors.

The Dell folder I got with all the CDs / DVDs in is at my parent's house a couple of hundred miles away, so I've asked them to send it up to me. However, I don't know if the stuff in there is sufficient to do a fresh install of Vista Home Premium, as I seem to remember there being a ghost image on the original hard drive. What does the folder have in it? Just a backup CD/DVD which copies the ghost image across? I don't want to have to buy a new copy of Vista, and I don't believe I should have to if I already own a license.

Out of interest, I've bought a Seagate Momentus 7200.3 G-Force 320GB 7200rpm ST9320421ASG to replace it. Does anyone have any experience of this drive?

http://www.lambda-tek.com/componentshop/index.pl?prodID=B127658

 

You should have a Vista re-install disc in your Dell folder. This is all you will need for a clean install.

Also, see Les’ guide for Vista re-installation along with Dell’s MediaDirect

I believe the Dell recovery partition that was originally on your machine would have been an image of the system in factory settings. Pretty much the same as a clean install albeit with Dell’s quickset etc. Installed. It is no big loss.

Let us know how you get on!

Oh and by the way, if it is a Dell Vista disc you use, you will not need to input any licence key. If it is a retail disc, use the key that is printed on the bottom of your laptop. Either way it is completely legitimate.

Edit: And by the looks of things the drive will be fine as well.

 

That's of course assuming that you can get the drivers from elsewhere. They aren't needed for the installation of the OS itself, but they are needed to make your machine fully functional. Of course, if your Dell came with the OS disk, it almost certainly came with the driver disk as well. Probably good practice to update those drivers either way, but details, details...