Where can I swap out my drive?

May 7, 2006 7:43 AM

Gah! The monitor on my Dell laptop decided to die last night. I could really use the files on my hard drive right about now. Where can I take it?

Apparently, my extended warranty is just a giant profit margin, as they can't promise me anything until Wednesday. This wasn't a hard drive crash, so I don't need professional data recovery - just access to a spare machine for a few minutes so I can send files to Gmail. Is there any place out there that can do this cheaply? This is an Inspiron 8500 running XP, if that matters.

posted by Saucy Intruder to computers & internet (23 comments total)

Could you just hook up an external monitor?
posted by jtfowl0 at 7:47 AM on May 7, 2006

Tried that. It might be the video card.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 7:51 AM on May 7, 2006

The typical death of an LCD screen involves the backlight going out - the lightbulb burns out, nothing more. If this is the case, you'll still be able to see the screen in the right light - look closely.

If the screen is truly dead, just hook up an external monitor.
posted by jellicle at 7:52 AM on May 7, 2006

(I'm sure you tried this, but...) Most laptops require you to press a special button to have video output sent to a separate monitor. Are you still getting no video signal after hooking up the monitor and pressing that button?
posted by arco at 7:56 AM on May 7, 2006

Alt-F5, Fn-F8, and all possible combinations thereof. Nothing.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 8:02 AM on May 7, 2006

You can buy an external USB enclosure for your laptop hard drive for about $20 at CompUSA (or any computer store, for that matter) that will allow you use your laptop's hard drive as an external USB drive on any computer you want to copy the files. If you are dealing with big files, make sure you get a USB 2.0 model or copying will take forever. Instructions for removing the hard drive from your laptop can be found here.
posted by jtfowl0 at 8:02 AM on May 7, 2006

The screen is totally black; nothing can be seen. The moment of death was a screen of gray with a black square serving as the mouse cursor.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 8:03 AM on May 7, 2006

If your monitor's burnt out, the external monitor should work. There's a function key for using the external output, maybe fn-f5 for dells? There are also usually replacement screens available on ebay if your laptop is out of warranty.

If you need your data now now now, you can buy a usb/firewire-enabled external hdd enclosure for your hdd for $10-40 depending on where you shop. Make sure it matches the type of hdd you have - ie, SATA or ATA or IDE or whatever. Pull out your hard drive, put it in the enclosure, and plug it into another machine elsewhere. It's very simple. If you're not sure how to remove the hdd for your dell, they even include illustrated instructions on their support site, which is also where you'll be able to see what kind of hard drive you have. Good luck!
posted by cactus at 8:08 AM on May 7, 2006

Instructions for removing the hard drive from your laptop can be found here.

Of course, doing this would most likely void your warranty. But since you're in law school (right?), those files are probably extremely important to you right now and it might be worth taking the financial hit.

BTW, it doesn't sound like the monitor went out (otherwise, wouldn't hooking it up to an external work perfectly?). It sounds like the motherboard is failing/losing a connection somewhere.
posted by SeizeTheDay at 8:11 AM on May 7, 2006

Is this what I need? I think I have a 2.5" hard drive, but it looks like this, not like this.
I doubt removing the HD will void my warranty, or that they can tell if I do.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 8:18 AM on May 7, 2006

If you remove the HD, Dell's service staff will be able to tell, without question, unless you are very good. They may not care, but they can tell.

Was your computer set up for networking already? If so, see if you can simply connect to it from another machine over the network to get the files you need. But are you sure it is actually booting fully, and just not giving you video? Does the caps lock key light when you press it?

Let's get the exact model # here too, so we can tell the exact keystroke combo to activate the external monitor.
posted by fourcheesemac at 8:22 AM on May 7, 2006

Caps lock, num lock, and scroll lock are all working fine.

Here's what I got:
1 0U838 ASSEMBLY, BASE (ASSEMBLY OR GROUP), BOTTOM, 10/100, NO-ASF
1 2C415 ASSEMBLY, CABLE, 15.4, LINDBERGH AND KAPALUA
1 7T774 LIQUID CRYSTAL DISPLAY, Wide Super Extended Graphics Array, NO-SPWG, 15.4, SAMSUNG
2 3Y182 DUAL IN-LINE MEMORY MODULE, 256, 266, 32X64, 8K, 200, BURN 2
1 5P144 BATTERY, MALAYSIA DIRECT SHIP, 11.1V, 9C, LITHIUM, SONY
1 7T894 KIT, DOCUMENTATON ON FLOPPY DISK, INTERVIDEO, 4.0, WITH DOLBY HEADPHONE TECHNOLOGY
1 2Y310 ASSEMBLY, COMPACT DISK READ WRITE/DIGITAL VIDEO DISK DRIVE COMBO, SMALL FORM FACTOR, SAMSUNG, D MODULES
1 8X960 ASSEMBLY, CARD (CIRCUIT), GRAPHICS, 32M, ATI TECHNOLOGIES INC, M9, P
1 4Y427 KIT, SOFTWARE, WP-PRDCT-STE10.0, V3, ENGLAND/ENGLISH
1 4W419 KIT, SOFTWARE, BRTNCA2K3, ENGLAND/ENGLISH
1 4T139 KIT, SOFTWARE, QIKN-NWUSR-ED-2K2, ENGLAND/ENGLISH
1 8W383 KIT, SOFTWARE, OVERPACK, WXPPSP1, COMPACT DISKETTE W/DOCUMENTATION, ENGLAND/ENGLISH
1 J0846 CARD (CIRCUIT), WIRELESS, MINI PCI CARD, TM1300, BROADCOM CORPORATION
1 4G167 HARD DRIVE, 40GB, I, 9.5MM, 5.4K, HIT-EUCL
1 8267R CONNECTOR, HEADER, 2X22, FEMALE, 2, S, G, 35K, THIRD HEIGHT, CHIP SET
1 70TVD ASSEMBLY, CABLE, S-VIDEO, WEST
1 8Y114 KIT, CORD, FLAT, 3F, D3W/3P, UNITED STATES
1 9T215 ASSEMBLY, ADAPTER, ALTERNATING CURRENT, 90W19.5V, LITEON, WORLD WIDE
1 1M745 KEYBOARD, 87, UNITED STATES, ENGLAND/ENGLISH, DUAL POINTING, D-FAMILY, R2
1 0120C INSERT, BLANK, PC MEMORY CARD INTL. ASSOC., CP/CPX
1 1U327 PIPE, HEIGHT, LINDBERGH AND KAPALUA
1 8U005 PROCESSOR, 80532, 2.4G, 512K, MICRO FLIP CHIP PLASTIC GRID ARRAY, C1
posted by Saucy Intruder at 8:25 AM on May 7, 2006

Ps -- caps lock key lighting up will tell you if you are even getting power, nothing else. Have you tried a safe-boot? (see here ) Or have you tried booting from a CD? Not up on dells, but isn't there a hard reset button somewhere? Have you tried, in other words, theories pertaining to other common failures besides the display . . . .
posted by fourcheesemac at 8:25 AM on May 7, 2006

Not sure about the whole voiding warranty thing, call and ask them if it would be ok, if so, have them note on your account that you are doing this AFTER the problem happened, so they don't think you are trying to trick them.

The enclosure you found at CompUSA is indeed the right one. The two pictures of hard drives you posted are the same thing, the first one is just a 2.5" hard drive that is still in the Dell enclosure. You just have to remove a few screws to get it out and then put it into the new external enclosure. Not difficult at all, but check on the warranty thing first.
posted by jtfowl0 at 8:39 AM on May 7, 2006

You also don't need an external enclosure. For about $5 you can buy a 2.5" to 3.5" HDD adaptor to connect it to any old 40-pin IDE cable in a desktop. It also converts the power to run off of a standard 4-pin molex connector.

In the shops I've worked, we always had one of these for connecting laptop drives to standard desktop PCs.
posted by WinnipegDragon at 9:39 AM on May 7, 2006

This is the adaptor you want. Less useful maybe than the enclosure, but cheaper.
posted by WinnipegDragon at 9:42 AM on May 7, 2006

Gah, one more post. The reason your drive looks different than the second picture you posted is that the drive is in a mounting bracket.

There should be four screws on the bottom of that bracket. Take them out, and your drive will lift out of the bracket, and it will look like the second picture.

The 2.5" IDE HDD is an industry standard. Either the enclosure or the adaptor I posted above will work with your Dell's HDD.
posted by WinnipegDragon at 9:44 AM on May 7, 2006

You guys just might have saved the day for this slacker 3L who doesn't back up his data. I'm off to Compusa this afternoon and I'll keep you all posted.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 10:05 AM on May 7, 2006

2 things:

1) Removing your hard drive does NOT void your warranty, that's just paranoia talking.


2) There's no way Dell could tell if you removed your hard drive. Hard drives on Dells are meant to be user-replaceable/user-upgradable parts. On every Dell I've seen in the last 4 years, it was a matter of ONE screw.

I vote for going to your nearest electronics store and getting an external enclosure for it.

You will probably have to send your computer back to Dell for the Video card to be replaced. When I sent my computer back to Dell, the RECOMMENDED that I keep the hard drive, in order to minimize strain on the hard drive, and to allow me to have access to the files on the drive.
posted by hatsix at 4:43 PM on May 7, 2006

This just happened to me on my Dell Inspiron 8600. Am using an external monitor, but does anyone know how to/who can replace the backlight? My warranty expired two months ago -- sigh.
posted by mozhet at 5:24 PM on May 7, 2006

Woohoo! I hooked up the drive to the wife's Powerbook, and now I have all my class notes. Thanks everyone, you saved Christmas.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 6:43 PM on May 7, 2006

Congrats on getting your data off! Now as to the repair, this is pretty damning: "The moment of death was a screen of gray with a black square serving as the mouse cursor."

That's a problem with the video chipset itself, not the display hardware. It's likely that your panel and backlight are perfectly fine. If the mouse cursor turned into a black block, it means the display and RAMDAC were working fine but the video RAM itself was inaccessible, bogusly mapped, or blank. If your machine has a separate video card and motherboard, it could just be a loose connector. Or it could mean either component is completely fried.

Don't take the machine apart further. Having recovered your data (now would be a good time to make a complete image of the drive, I recommend Drive Snapshot for its image-mounting capability), put the drive back in the machine and return it to Dell. A friend of mine took the cover off his factory-virgin Inspiron to investigate a rattling noise and lack of video, and it was missing the video card hold-down screws entirely. Dell said it couldn't possibly have shipped that way, and refused to warranty the fried mobo. Considering that he'd only gotten it 2 weeks earlier, you'd think he would've remembered doing something like that.
posted by Myself at 8:58 PM on May 7, 2006

If anyone is still following this thread -
After finals, my computer started working again. Just like before. With no explanation.
It's like my computer went off and had an affair with the captain of the football team, then came back and acted like nothing happened.
I'm totally dumping it after the summer.
posted by Saucy Intruder at 8:47 AM on June 8, 2006