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Repairing A Laptop

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KyCatFan_rivals45723

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I have a couple year old Toshiba Satellite laptop that the hard drive went out in a little while back. It wasn't being used very much so I think the rest of the components should be in really good shape. I think the hard drive was just a bad one and it went out while carrying the laptop around while it was turned on. What would be involved in repairing it?

Of course it would need a new hard drive installed. Would I have to purchase a brand new copy of Windows to install on it since it was preloaded and didn't come with a disc? I have an identical laptop to it so I don't know if I could somehow recover it through that one. I guess I would also need to have all the drivers downloaded to it as well. It was a $600 laptop.

Is it even worth repairing for the cost of taking it somewhere or just replacing it would be better? I am hoping maybe it would only be a couple hundred to repair. I would like to give it to my son to use for school and save the wear and tear on my other laptop.
 
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GLR5555

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KyCatFan said:
I have a couple year old Toshiba Satellite laptop that the hard drive went out in a little while back. It wasn't being used very much so I think the rest of the components should be in really good shape. I think the hard drive was just a bad one and it went out while carrying the laptop around while it was turned on. What would be involved in repairing it?

Of course it would need a new hard drive installed. Would I have to purchase a brand new copy of Windows to install on it since it was preloaded and didn't come with a disc? I have an identical laptop to it so I don't know if I could somehow recover it through that one. I guess I would also need to have all the drivers downloaded to it as well. It was a $600 laptop.

Is it even worth repairing for the cost of taking it somewhere or just replacing it would be better? I am hoping maybe it would only be a couple hundred to repair. I would like to give it to my son to use for school and save the wear and tear on my other laptop.
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The HDD is not a requirement for the unit to power up. May have other issues.
 
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TheEgyptianMagician

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It is worth repairing, and worth repairing yourself. The difference in computing power between your old laptop and something new depending on price is probably pretty minimal and depending on your son's needs probably effectively zero.

A hard drive replacement in a laptop is generally pretty simple, depending on how easy the manufacture designed your access to it. Either way, it's not something that requires a technician and you could do it yourself just google around or maybe there is a tear down video of your specific laptop on youtube or somehting showing you precisely what you need to do. You would not need a new windows license, the windows key is likely on a sticker on the underside of the laptop or maybe underneath the battery if it has a removable battery. You can download a the windows iso for whatever version is on the laptop and then put it on a USB stick and install from there on the new harddrive
 
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allabouttheUK

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KyCatFan said:
I have a couple year old Toshiba Satellite laptop that the hard drive went out in a little while back. It wasn't being used very much so I think the rest of the components should be in really good shape. I think the hard drive was just a bad one and it went out while carrying the laptop around while it was turned on. What would be involved in repairing it?

Of course it would need a new hard drive installed. Would I have to purchase a brand new copy of Windows to install on it since it was preloaded and didn't come with a disc? I have an identical laptop to it so I don't know if I could somehow recover it through that one. I guess I would also need to have all the drivers downloaded to it as well. It was a $600 laptop.

Is it even worth repairing for the cost of taking it somewhere or just replacing it would be better? I am hoping maybe it would only be a couple hundred to repair. I would like to give it to my son to use for school and save the wear and tear on my other laptop.
Click to expand...

Will the laptop power on at all? If yes, can you access the BIOS to run a scan on the HDD to make sure it's the HDD having the issue and not the OS?
If it's not powering on at all, then it could be the battery, or the internal power supply that is the issue.
If you replace the HDD then yes, you will need a valid copy of Windows or whatever OS you want installed.
 
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KyCatFan_rivals45723

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My wife took it to Best Buy where we bought it (was out of warranty of course). They said it was the hard drive that was bad. I haven't messed with it since. Just came across it while straightening up my bedroom and thought about trying to do something with it. I think it wouldn't load up and was stuck on the same screen when trying to boot it up or it was stuck in a boot up cycle where it kept rebooting. Not 100% sure which it was. I will try messing with it again when I get home and see what it was doing for sure.
 
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-LEK-

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KyCatFan said:
My wife took it to Best Buy where we bought it (was out of warranty of course). They said it was the hard drive that was bad. I haven't messed with it since. Just came across it while straightening up my bedroom and thought about trying to do something with it. I think it wouldn't load up and was stuck on the same screen when trying to boot it up or it was stuck in a boot up cycle where it kept rebooting. Not 100% sure which it was. I will try messing with it again when I get home and see what it was doing for sure.
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Read SomeDude's post. Pretty accurate. Really its just like putting lego's together. There is a SATA chord, that hooks to harddrive and few screws. I have done it on 2 laptops, and its really easy. Others have given suggestions on OS, which are legit, unless you have the OS on a disc from some where.Should cost $50. Stay away from Seagate HDD. Also, if its just for whatever, not worth going Solid State or SSD.
 
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allabouttheUK

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KyCatFan said:
My wife took it to Best Buy where we bought it (was out of warranty of course). They said it was the hard drive that was bad. I haven't messed with it since. Just came across it while straightening up my bedroom and thought about trying to do something with it. I think it wouldn't load up and was stuck on the same screen when trying to boot it up or it was stuck in a boot up cycle where it kept rebooting. Not 100% sure which it was. I will try messing with it again when I get home and see what it was doing for sure.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I would try to get into the BIOS first and run any scans available from there. If it says that the HDD is good to go, then all you need is a recovery CD for the OS that you are running...maybe. It would be worth a shot and could save you even more money.
 
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jtrue28

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Does the laptop have the OEM Windows key sticker on the bottom? If it is Windows 8/8.1, there won't be a OEM key sticker, as the key is loaded into the BIOS.
 
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KyCatFan_rivals45723

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It's actually running Windows 7 and it does have a sticker on the bottom. It starts up and shows a Toshiba screen, but goes blank after that and you don't hear the hard drive starting up. I can get into the BIOS, but I don't see anything in it about testing the hard drive. The BIOS is called InsydeH20.
 
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GLR5555

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KyCatFan said:
It's actually running Windows 7 and it does have a sticker on the bottom. It starts up and shows a Toshiba screen, but goes blank after that and you don't hear the hard drive starting up. I can get into the BIOS, but I don't see anything in it about testing the hard drive. The BIOS is called InsydeH20.
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Once inside the bios, you can reset the boot order sequence. Change it to optical drive first instead of HDD. Insert a restore disk and march on.
 
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argubs2

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Forget about testing the hard drive. If it's not reading during start up, the thing is fried or at minimum near the end of its life if you somehow got it spinning again.

An HD replacement in a desktop or laptop is extremely easy, rivaled only by adding or replacing RAM in regard to ease. SSDs have dropped in price significantly over the last year so I would roll with one of those. You sacrifice capacity for speed but you can pick up a TB of space in an external drive for cheap.
 
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GLR5555

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KyCatFan said:
It's actually running Windows 7 and it does have a sticker on the bottom. It starts up and shows a Toshiba screen, but goes blank after that and you don't hear the hard drive starting up. I can get into the BIOS, but I don't see anything in it about testing the hard drive. The BIOS is called InsydeH20.
Click to expand...
Sounds like there may be bad sectors on the drive. Buy another one and find a restore disk.
 
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KyCatFan_rivals45723

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I actually had another hard drive I just took out of an older broken laptop and was able to install it into this laptop. It was a major pain in the butt. The oldest laptop had a number of small covers you could take off to get to the hardware in it. This Toshiba isn't made like that. I had to basically take the whole laptop apart to get the hard drive out. Plus the other hard drive had a different mount for it that I had to take apart to get it to fit in the Toshiba.

It went further but has the wrong Windows on the drive (Vista) so it is getting an error and kept trying to repair it. I went to the Microsoft site to download Windows 7, but the key for my version is tied into Toshiba's software and it wouldn't work. I didn't see a download on Toshiba's site for it so I am trying to make a recovery disc (usb drive) from my other identical laptop and see what happens. Hopefully this fixes it but I am not going to get my hopes up.
 
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MegaBlue05

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I would probably buy another, but as others have said, replacing a HD isn't too difficult, just a pain in the *** depending on the screws and covers, etc.

Former Toshiba Satellite owner here, and holy balls was that a garbage machine. The fans didn't work right at all. I damn near burnt the ish out of my leg with that thing one time and I was afraid it was going to set my house on fire if I didn't shut it down after every use. It also had Vista. Terrible, terrible OS.
 
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