Hi
This is my first post and I have only limited knowledge so any advice on manners,etc welcomed. Bought a Dell netbook about 18 months ago and managed to catch the power lead with my leg causing the machine to drop to the floor. The case remained intact but the hard drive is damaged and it won't boot. Running Windows XP and managed to run R from Recovery Console using USB optical drive. Chkdsk /r showed irrecoverable errors so have decided to buy new hard drive. Dell replacement is more than twice the price of say Hitachi 5400 2.5" 160Gig and so I'm tempted to buy the latter. Can anybody tell me if this is likely to fit the Dell caddy and if I just swap the drives over will I be able to re-install XP from USB optical drive without doing anything else? Grateful for any thoughts.
This is my first post and I have only limited knowledge so any advice on manners,etc welcomed. Bought a Dell netbook about 18 months ago and managed to catch the power lead with my leg causing the machine to drop to the floor. The case remained intact but the hard drive is damaged and it won't boot. Running Windows XP and managed to run R from Recovery Console using USB optical drive. Chkdsk /r showed irrecoverable errors so have decided to buy new hard drive. Dell replacement is more than twice the price of say Hitachi 5400 2.5" 160Gig and so I'm tempted to buy the latter. Can anybody tell me if this is likely to fit the Dell caddy and if I just swap the drives over will I be able to re-install XP from USB optical drive without doing anything else? Grateful for any thoughts.