I have this old Sony with dead hard drive - best way to make use of it?

Amazon.com: Sony VAIO VGN-FE770G 15.4" Laptop (Intel Core 2 Duo Processor T5600, 1 GB RAM, 120 GB Hard Drive, DVD+-R Dbl Layer/DVD+/-RW Drive): Computers & Accessories

Its hinge is kind of broken but still works.

I was wondering what would be the best way to make use of this? Should I bring it back to life by getting a new hard drive for it? If so, is there a cheap HDD I could get for this?

I was thinking of using it like a desktop.

 

I would fix it - hard drives are cheap. You could even get a cheap 128GB SSD and it should perform pretty decent. The hinge shouldn't be all that hard to repair if you wanted to use it as a laptop.

Then again I keep all my old tech working for some odd reason... I still have an IBM 386 laptop that I upgraded to "SSD" (IDE to CF adapter) and installed Linux on. It's funny to pull that thing out at Starbucks just to see the looks on peoples faces

 

Sure, any 2.5" SATA HDD/SSD will work. With a little work, you could remove the LCD half of the laptop and just it as an aux desktop if you have a spare monitor.

 

128GB SSD... which one do you recommend getting for this?

What would be a good cheap monitor to get to connect to this?

 

You don't need anything too crazy, maybe one of these

Newegg.com - Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Newegg.com - Mushkin Enhanced Chronos MKNSSDCR120GB 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

 

I was thinking maybe it would be too old a processor to benefit from the SSD?

 

Processor has nothing to do with disk IO. Games won't be faster but application startup and boot time will improve a lot. Besides SSD drives cost as much as normal disks, you just sacrifice capacity for speed.

 

Core 2 duo is not too bad. I know people who are still using Pentium III. Just don't run very resource-hungry apps on it, like Photoshop.

 

I'd not bother with any SATA3 drives, as the mobo can only handle SATA2 so you wouldn't gain the extra I/O speeds. Of course, SSD prices change so rapidly that you may well pick up the newer spec drive for almost the same price in which case go for it, as you can always use it in a newer machine.

As an example, I have an old SZ Vaio from 2007, which suffered from running far too hot and a really noisy fan (it was grinding against the housing) with Vista out of the box. I replaced the thermal paste with a far better make, Arctic Silver, and chucked Windows 7 on it, making it faster and cooler running. Then I replaced the fan with a better designed one that is silent, and switched to using a SATA2 SSD, with a Lubuntu linux operating system. It runs quickly, quietly, and coolly now. It is no longer used as my main machine to take to work, but sits at home and has become a surfing laptop for when I'm at home, plus I tinker on it, replacing the OS whenever I feel like trying something new or just fancy a change.

 

How much did the better designed fan, thermal paste, cost? Is it hard to do unless you are an expert in computers?

What do you suggest for an external monitor? Something that's big like at least 20 inches but doesn't take too much electricity.

 

I personally wouldn't mess with the fan/thermal paste; I would just clean out the vents on the machine for now. Ideally, you'd take it apart and clean the vents that way; I'm lazy and just shoot some compressed air into the vents on my HP Compaq nw8440 whenever I sense the fan is running harder than usual Of course, there's no way of telling how hot and loud your VAIO FE will be until you replace the hard drive and get it running again.

Once you've replaced the hard drive and cleaned the vents (if needed), the first thing I'd upgrade would be the RAM. 1GB is a bit low these days; I would upgrade it to at least 2GB (IIRC, the VAIO FE can go up to 4GB, but I might be wrong). The RAM upgrade would provide a performance boost, especially if you're running Windows Vista or Windows 7 and/or you plan on using multiple memory intensive applications.

 

One idea is to use it as a home theater - use your TV as the monitor. These LED and LCD TVs aren't all that bad when used as monitors. Take a little time adjusting the picture - the normal settings are for TV use and will look harsh for text. If you have HDMI connectivity, nothing like it. Otherwise, get a good VGA cable, preferably VGA to component.

Another option is to stream movies from your laptop to your TV. Most TVs support this nowadays.

Bottom line - what you've got is not to be sneered at. It is not the top of the line, of course, but it isn't unusable by a long way.

 

Having found a guide to opening the FE, I wouldn't worry about the fan or CPU paste as it looks like you'd need to dismantle most of the machine to get to them! I only changed mine because the SZ had a well known defect where the fan was far too loud and not that efficient at moving air.

As Teraforce says, get more RAM, which should be cheap as you'd only need older, slower RAM (it looks like you'll have 2 x 512MB so get 2 x 1GB sticks), stick in a new HDD and see how it goes. What OS is it? I'd consider upgrading to Windows 7, as it runs quite well on older kit I find, or a Linux like the user friendly Ubuntu or one of its flavours (Lubuntu is my current one, very similar to Windows in usage). If the hinge is troublesome, put it somewhere as if it was a desktop and leave it open all the time, or if it gets really bad, look at removing it and using an external monitor. I wouldn't go for any really fancy, high resolution monitor as there is no dedicated graphics card inside and the Intel 950 isn't the most powerful for shoving huge numbers of pixels.

 

Along similar lines, I just brought back an old SZ160 from 2006 - T2400 1.83GHz first generation Core Duo - which I had already upgraded to 4GB memory (3.2GB usable since the whole platform is only 32-bit capable).

I stuck an Intel 330 128gb SSD in there and installed Windows 7, and the thing flies. For general tasks (web, email, documents, music, playing videos) it really feels just as good as a current computer. Very snappy and responsive - the SSD makes a huge difference.

Only thing I might still do is upgrade the WiFi card on it to 802.11n, but I'll see how the parents like it first.

 

I recently removed the fan on my nc8430 (renowned for giving off space shuttle-like heat and noise) and found a forest of dust clumped to the vents so thick it wasn't possible to see through the other side. Took a cotton swab and thoroughly cleaned it, now the fan actually throttles down instead running at max all the time. Highly recommend making the sure vents and innards are clear OP.

Another vote here for a fast HDD or SSD. You could also try installing Linux, I've got Ubuntu 12.04 on my rickety Core Duo nc8430 and it boots about as fast my current Vaio