HDD Help
 

I'm trying to fix my friends laptop, from what I've gathered the HDD looks to be dead, however the laptop was a refurb so I'm worried that it might actually be the HDD controller. The HDD itself is a Fujitsu IDE drive and I don't have an external case for a 2.5" IDE to test it. I've downloaded a couple programs from Fujitsu that're supposed to test the drive, one runs in Windows, the other DOS. This would be great except the laptop can't boot into the OS (it can't see the drive) and I made a DOS 5.0 disc, however once I've booted into it, I'm not sure how to run the program, as the laptop only has one CD drive and DOS doesn't support USB.

Help?

What symptoms make you think it's a faulty HDD?

maybe you can burn the program into a CD, boot the laptop into DOS and once it stops swap CDs and run the program, not sure if it will work as I haven't touched DOS in years but you can try it :)

well when you power it on, it pops up with a screen saying it can't find any OS. Then when I boot into Ubuntu off a CD, the first time it didn't even list the HDD. The second time it listed the HDD, but didn't think there was anything on it. When I tried to install Ubuntu (just to see if it would) it started giving me error codes as soon as it tried to write anything to the HDD.

I tried to boot into DOS and then swap the CD and run the HDD test, but no luck. I tried both the Windows and DOS programs in Ubuntu too just in case, but no luck.

You need to install the Fujitsu HD into a separate desktop computer, then run the DOS or Windows HD diagnostics program on the desktop processor. Ask the utility to check the Fujitsu HD that is connect to it.

The only way you can do this without a spare desktop computer is if the notebook has a floppy drive. Most notebooks no longer have a floppy.

Just buy an adapter for 2.5 IDE to 3.5" IDE.. i picked one up for 11 bucks from a-power..

http://ncix.com/products/?sku=40033&...tech.com%20Ltd

plus $7 shipping

Might as well just buy an enclosure if you're going to buy that cable.

thanks gents, 3.5 to 2.5 adaptor it is.

an enclosure would be nice, but I'm honestly going to use this once, I have no need for a 2.5" IDE case.