need help! hard drive install

need some help people. i have a dell xps m1530 that the hard drive has crashed. its not doing the click of death but wont boot windows. questions are, if i buy a replacement hard drive, can i just reinstall all the software including windows?? i have all the restore discs that came with the computer. also how hard is it get the pictures off the crashed hard drive??? was told i can get the cable kit that hooks to the hard drive and hook up to another computer and get them off

thanks i appreciate any help i can get!!!

 

wow no one wants to help

 

1) Please don't bump your thread within 24 hours of a post.

2) Have some patience; this is a message board on a Sunday, not a call center.

3) If you have the Dell installation media and whatnot, you should be able to re-install Windows and most of the software that came on the factory install.

As for your old files, if the drive isn't completely hosed, you can get a USB/SATA adapter and copy data off the bad drive. If that doesn't work and Windows can't access the drive, you're basically hosed, and you will probably have to go to some data recovery company, etc.

Backup your data regularly and have a nice day.

 

Yes, you can hook up your old hard drive to another computer to recover the data; it just sounds like your Windows install is corrupted and the drive itself is in tact (and assuming the data). First, you'll want to find a way to attach the old drive to another computer. One of the easiest ways of doing this is to buy a hard drive dock (like this one; I have a ThermalTake version and it works great, but this is the same thing). You'll want to ground yourself first before replacing the drive in your computer. Get yourself an ESD band (can be had for $5 at your local BestBuy or other computer store) and connect yourself to a known grounded object (you could use a plugged-in desktop computer as well).

You then take your hard drive out of your computer (see my photos below) and once it's out, insert the drive into the hole at the top of the dock and connect the drive to it, in the same way you'd insert a game into a SNES system. Once you do that, plug in either the eSATA or USB cable into the second computer, and it'll read the old hard drive as if it was an external drive. From there, copy/paste all the data you want off the drive, and then you can

Below is a picture guide for showing you how to take your hard drive out of the laptop (and to put it in, just follow in reverse).

Spoiler

Unplug the laptop, take the battery out, and hold down the power button for ~10 second to discharge any remaining current.



Find the panel that covers the HDD and unscrew the screw(s) that hold it in place, then remove panel.



Remove old HDD.



Remove any metal or rubber caddy that cushions the old HDD. In my case, I had two rubber rails supporting the drive. You should be left with the bare drive.



Take your SSD, install the metal/rubber caddy, slide into the drive bay, and plug into the SATA connector.



Place the HDD panel back into place and screw it back in. Plug in your battery and charger and turn the computer on to go into the BIOS to see if it recognizes the drive.

In the future, make sure to keep regular backups of your important data so a panic like this doesn't happen again