Imminent drive failure

On bootup I am getting

1720 Smart hard drive detects imminent failure. (Failing attrib 5)

Backup hard drive and run HDD self test.

HDD self test said failed drive.

Can I transfer the drive to an external drive and boot to it?

I tried cloning drive to external drive, but it will not boot to it.

Internal drive has both XP and Puppy Linux.

Andy wrote:
On bootup I am getting

1720 Smart hard drive detects imminent failure. (Failing attrib 5)

Backup hard drive and run HDD self test.

HDD self test said failed drive.

Can I transfer the drive to an external drive and boot to it?

I tried cloning drive to external drive, but it will not boot to it.

Internal drive has both XP and Puppy Linux.

You can clone and boot Linux.

You cannot clone and boot WinXP, unless
you find the (complicated) BootBusExtender
recipe.

When WinXP normally boots a USB hard drive,
it gets about half way through the boot. It
decided to "commission" the USB bus. When the
bus reset happens, the boot process stops, because
the reading of the hard drive has been interrupted.
It just wasn't designed to do that.

What the BootBusExtender recipe does, is tell the
OS that the USB bus is special. And that the USB
bus needs to be set up, much earlier in the boot
process.

The recipe is out there on a couple of sites,
but personally, I wouldn't waste my time doing it.
If there was a nice script that was *guaranteed*
to get the details right, I might be tempted.
But doing it by hand, I've got better things to do.

*******

What you should be aiming for *right now*.

1) Get that drive backed up, via an image backup.
For example, Macrium Reflect Free can back up both
NTFS and EXT2/3/4 type partitions. If Macrium
finds a partition type field it doesn't recognize,
it has the option of doing a sector by sector
backup. For partition types it recognizes, it
does "intelligent" copying, and only the
clusters with data in them get copied.

2) The image file (.MRIMG) should be stored on
the external drive. It will be the sum size,
of all the data written to the original drive.
A 500GB drive with 100GB of data on it,
makes a 100GB MRIMG file.

3) Later, you shut down (for the last time) with
the broken drive inside the PC. Pull the broken
drive, replace with a brand new empty drive.

4) Boot with the Macrium Reflect emergency boot CD.
This is the one you make, right after installing
Macrium Reflect. The emergency boot CD provides
a runtime environment for the restore operation.
The restore will copy the external image (MRIMG)
back to the blank internal drive.

5) Once the restore is complete, you can attempt
the dual boot options on the fresh drive. Boot
WinXP, make sure it works. Boot Linux, make sure
it works.

You should not leave the old drive sitting in the
PC for step (4) or (5). The old drive, the I/O cables
are disconnected at the end of step (3). This is
to prevent problems on the first boot of the
copied WinXP OS. If the clone sees itself on
the original disk, it "becomes confused" and
will be damaged by the experience. Always
boot a clone, with the original disconnected,
for the first boot. Once the newly minted drive
has booted once with WinXP on it, it should be
fine after that.

More tools than Macrium can do the backup image.
Each tool must have a "bare metal restore
emergency boot CD", so you have something
to use during the restore.

Your priority at the moment (the clock is
ticking), is to *make sure* you have a backup
copy (not a clone), of the original disk. That's
because, some people clone to an external USB
that they cannot figure out how to disassemble.
If your external USB disk is a home-brew with
easy screwdriver access, then clone to your
hearts content. But some Seagate made USB drives,
are the devil to get open. (No, I don't
recommend sawing them open.) If your external
is that sort of contraption, instead just
put an image of the affected disk on the
external, until you can buy and install
a blank new internal drive.

Paul

On Sunday, May 29, 2016 at 5:05:04 PM UTC-5, Paul wrote:
Andy wrote:
On bootup I am getting

1720 Smart hard drive detects imminent failure. (Failing attrib 5)

Backup hard drive and run HDD self test.

HDD self test said failed drive.

Can I transfer the drive to an external drive and boot to it?

I tried cloning drive to external drive, but it will not boot to it.

Internal drive has both XP and Puppy Linux.

You can clone and boot Linux.

You cannot clone and boot WinXP, unless
you find the (complicated) BootBusExtender
recipe.

When WinXP normally boots a USB hard drive,
it gets about half way through the boot. It
decided to "commission" the USB bus. When the
bus reset happens, the boot process stops, because
the reading of the hard drive has been interrupted.
It just wasn't designed to do that.

What the BootBusExtender recipe does, is tell the
OS that the USB bus is special. And that the USB
bus needs to be set up, much earlier in the boot
process.

The recipe is out there on a couple of sites,
but personally, I wouldn't waste my time doing it.
If there was a nice script that was *guaranteed*
to get the details right, I might be tempted.
But doing it by hand, I've got better things to do.

*******

What you should be aiming for *right now*.

1) Get that drive backed up, via an image backup.
For example, Macrium Reflect Free can back up both
NTFS and EXT2/3/4 type partitions. If Macrium
finds a partition type field it doesn't recognize,
it has the option of doing a sector by sector
backup. For partition types it recognizes, it
does "intelligent" copying, and only the
clusters with data in them get copied.

2) The image file (.MRIMG) should be stored on
the external drive. It will be the sum size,
of all the data written to the original drive.
A 500GB drive with 100GB of data on it,
makes a 100GB MRIMG file.

3) Later, you shut down (for the last time) with
the broken drive inside the PC. Pull the broken
drive, replace with a brand new empty drive.

4) Boot with the Macrium Reflect emergency boot CD.
This is the one you make, right after installing
Macrium Reflect. The emergency boot CD provides
a runtime environment for the restore operation.
The restore will copy the external image (MRIMG)
back to the blank internal drive.

5) Once the restore is complete, you can attempt
the dual boot options on the fresh drive. Boot
WinXP, make sure it works. Boot Linux, make sure
it works.

You should not leave the old drive sitting in the
PC for step (4) or (5). The old drive, the I/O cables
are disconnected at the end of step (3). This is
to prevent problems on the first boot of the
copied WinXP OS. If the clone sees itself on
the original disk, it "becomes confused" and
will be damaged by the experience. Always
boot a clone, with the original disconnected,
for the first boot. Once the newly minted drive
has booted once with WinXP on it, it should be
fine after that.

More tools than Macrium can do the backup image.
Each tool must have a "bare metal restore
emergency boot CD", so you have something
to use during the restore.

Your priority at the moment (the clock is
ticking), is to *make sure* you have a backup
copy (not a clone), of the original disk. That's
because, some people clone to an external USB
that they cannot figure out how to disassemble.
If your external USB disk is a home-brew with
easy screwdriver access, then clone to your
hearts content. But some Seagate made USB drives,
are the devil to get open. (No, I don't
recommend sawing them open.) If your external
is that sort of contraption, instead just
put an image of the affected disk on the
external, until you can buy and install
a blank new internal drive.

Paul

I have always had batch/scripts to backup files to an external drive.

Old system was an HP 6730b.

It's not worth buying another drive for a 10+ old system.

So, I lost nothing but some extra time.

I am now using a HP G60 with 3 Gb of RAM.

On Tuesday, May 31, 2016 at 9:53:25 PM UTC-5, Andy wrote:
On Sunday, May 29, 2016 at 5:05:04 PM UTC-5, Paul wrote:
Andy wrote:
On bootup I am getting

1720 Smart hard drive detects imminent failure. (Failing attrib 5)

Backup hard drive and run HDD self test.

HDD self test said failed drive.

Can I transfer the drive to an external drive and boot to it?

I tried cloning drive to external drive, but it will not boot to it.

Internal drive has both XP and Puppy Linux.

You can clone and boot Linux.

You cannot clone and boot WinXP, unless
you find the (complicated) BootBusExtender
recipe.

When WinXP normally boots a USB hard drive,
it gets about half way through the boot. It
decided to "commission" the USB bus. When the
bus reset happens, the boot process stops, because
the reading of the hard drive has been interrupted.
It just wasn't designed to do that.

What the BootBusExtender recipe does, is tell the
OS that the USB bus is special. And that the USB
bus needs to be set up, much earlier in the boot
process.

The recipe is out there on a couple of sites,
but personally, I wouldn't waste my time doing it.
If there was a nice script that was *guaranteed*
to get the details right, I might be tempted.
But doing it by hand, I've got better things to do.

*******

What you should be aiming for *right now*.

1) Get that drive backed up, via an image backup.
For example, Macrium Reflect Free can back up both
NTFS and EXT2/3/4 type partitions. If Macrium
finds a partition type field it doesn't recognize,
it has the option of doing a sector by sector
backup. For partition types it recognizes, it
does "intelligent" copying, and only the
clusters with data in them get copied.

2) The image file (.MRIMG) should be stored on
the external drive. It will be the sum size,
of all the data written to the original drive.
A 500GB drive with 100GB of data on it,
makes a 100GB MRIMG file.

3) Later, you shut down (for the last time) with
the broken drive inside the PC. Pull the broken
drive, replace with a brand new empty drive.

4) Boot with the Macrium Reflect emergency boot CD.
This is the one you make, right after installing
Macrium Reflect. The emergency boot CD provides
a runtime environment for the restore operation.
The restore will copy the external image (MRIMG)
back to the blank internal drive.

5) Once the restore is complete, you can attempt
the dual boot options on the fresh drive. Boot
WinXP, make sure it works. Boot Linux, make sure
it works.

You should not leave the old drive sitting in the
PC for step (4) or (5). The old drive, the I/O cables
are disconnected at the end of step (3). This is
to prevent problems on the first boot of the
copied WinXP OS. If the clone sees itself on
the original disk, it "becomes confused" and
will be damaged by the experience. Always
boot a clone, with the original disconnected,
for the first boot. Once the newly minted drive
has booted once with WinXP on it, it should be
fine after that.

More tools than Macrium can do the backup image.
Each tool must have a "bare metal restore
emergency boot CD", so you have something
to use during the restore.

Your priority at the moment (the clock is
ticking), is to *make sure* you have a backup
copy (not a clone), of the original disk. That's
because, some people clone to an external USB
that they cannot figure out how to disassemble.
If your external USB disk is a home-brew with
easy screwdriver access, then clone to your
hearts content. But some Seagate made USB drives,
are the devil to get open. (No, I don't
recommend sawing them open.) If your external
is that sort of contraption, instead just
put an image of the affected disk on the
external, until you can buy and install
a blank new internal drive.

Paul

I have always had batch/scripts to backup files to an external drive.

Old system was an HP 6730b.

It's not worth buying another drive for a 10+ old system.

So, I lost nothing but some extra time.

I am now using a HP G60 with 3 Gb of RAM.

Will a 2.5 inch SATA drive fit any laptop ?

Thanks,
Andy

Andy wrote:
On Tuesday, May 31, 2016 at 9:53:25 PM UTC-5, Andy wrote:
On Sunday, May 29, 2016 at 5:05:04 PM UTC-5, Paul wrote:
Andy wrote:
On bootup I am getting

1720 Smart hard drive detects imminent failure. (Failing attrib 5)

Backup hard drive and run HDD self test.

HDD self test said failed drive.

Can I transfer the drive to an external drive and boot to it?

I tried cloning drive to external drive, but it will not boot to it.

Internal drive has both XP and Puppy Linux.
You can clone and boot Linux.

You cannot clone and boot WinXP, unless
you find the (complicated) BootBusExtender
recipe.

When WinXP normally boots a USB hard drive,
it gets about half way through the boot. It
decided to "commission" the USB bus. When the
bus reset happens, the boot process stops, because
the reading of the hard drive has been interrupted.
It just wasn't designed to do that.

What the BootBusExtender recipe does, is tell the
OS that the USB bus is special. And that the USB
bus needs to be set up, much earlier in the boot
process.

The recipe is out there on a couple of sites,
but personally, I wouldn't waste my time doing it.
If there was a nice script that was *guaranteed*
to get the details right, I might be tempted.
But doing it by hand, I've got better things to do.

*******

What you should be aiming for *right now*.

1) Get that drive backed up, via an image backup.
For example, Macrium Reflect Free can back up both
NTFS and EXT2/3/4 type partitions. If Macrium
finds a partition type field it doesn't recognize,
it has the option of doing a sector by sector
backup. For partition types it recognizes, it
does "intelligent" copying, and only the
clusters with data in them get copied.

2) The image file (.MRIMG) should be stored on
the external drive. It will be the sum size,
of all the data written to the original drive.
A 500GB drive with 100GB of data on it,
makes a 100GB MRIMG file.

3) Later, you shut down (for the last time) with
the broken drive inside the PC. Pull the broken
drive, replace with a brand new empty drive.

4) Boot with the Macrium Reflect emergency boot CD.
This is the one you make, right after installing
Macrium Reflect. The emergency boot CD provides
a runtime environment for the restore operation.
The restore will copy the external image (MRIMG)
back to the blank internal drive.

5) Once the restore is complete, you can attempt
the dual boot options on the fresh drive. Boot
WinXP, make sure it works. Boot Linux, make sure
it works.

You should not leave the old drive sitting in the
PC for step (4) or (5). The old drive, the I/O cables
are disconnected at the end of step (3). This is
to prevent problems on the first boot of the
copied WinXP OS. If the clone sees itself on
the original disk, it "becomes confused" and
will be damaged by the experience. Always
boot a clone, with the original disconnected,
for the first boot. Once the newly minted drive
has booted once with WinXP on it, it should be
fine after that.

More tools than Macrium can do the backup image.
Each tool must have a "bare metal restore
emergency boot CD", so you have something
to use during the restore.

Your priority at the moment (the clock is
ticking), is to *make sure* you have a backup
copy (not a clone), of the original disk. That's
because, some people clone to an external USB
that they cannot figure out how to disassemble.
If your external USB disk is a home-brew with
easy screwdriver access, then clone to your
hearts content. But some Seagate made USB drives,
are the devil to get open. (No, I don't
recommend sawing them open.) If your external
is that sort of contraption, instead just
put an image of the affected disk on the
external, until you can buy and install
a blank new internal drive.

Paul
I have always had batch/scripts to backup files to an external drive.

Old system was an HP 6730b.

It's not worth buying another drive for a 10+ old system.

So, I lost nothing but some extra time.

I am now using a HP G60 with 3 Gb of RAM.

Will a 2.5 inch SATA drive fit any laptop ?

Thanks,
Andy

Yes and no.

If you search online for a 2.5" 2TB external USB
hard drive, you may think "Oh, there is a dandy
big drive inside there. Wouldn't that be
wonderful in my laptop". Well, that won't
work, as those (huge) 2.5" SATA drives are
15mm high. The 15mm drives are not available
for retail sales, as a separate item, due to
the height issue. The 15mm leaves the maker
room for an additional platter.

The laptop hard drive bay is of limited vertical dimension.
Maybe 9.5mm and 12.5mm ? No room for a 15mm.

SSDs can come as 7mm with a 2.5mm plastic ring
to fit on top of them. To give a snug fit (if the
unit pinches the vertical dimension).

Normally, you would expect the laptop to have a
hard drive tray, four screws fit the drive to the
tray, more screws hold the tray in position. The
tray slides into the SATA connector. The 2.5" and
3.5" SATA connectors are the same size and pin count.

The SATA power connector (15 pin) has room for
three power rails. 3.3V, 5V, 12V (3 contacts in
parallel for each rail). 5V and 12V are used
for desktop drives. 5V alone is used for laptop
drives. Some of the smaller 1.8" drives, use 3.3V
and also use a microSATA connector. So while there
are some variations, you can use your desktop
cabling to work on a mix of 2.5" and 3.5" drives.
If you need to copy files onto them and so on.

Fitting a laptop drive isn't hard. Check the thickness
of the drive, figure out whether the bay has room for
just 9.5mm or can take 12.5mm. In extreme cases, a
poorly designed laptop bay, may be thermally constrained,
and can only take a 5400 RPM drive (as they would
run cooler if there is no cooling air). It'll be your
best guess, as to whether your laptop design is poorly cooled
or not. If it came with a 7200 RPM drive, chances are
there isn't a thermal problem. If it always seems to
come with a 5400 RPM drive, you have to wonder whether
there is a potential issue or not.

Paul

On Wednesday, June 1, 2016 at 2:39:33 PM UTC-5, Paul wrote:
Andy wrote:
On Tuesday, May 31, 2016 at 9:53:25 PM UTC-5, Andy wrote:
On Sunday, May 29, 2016 at 5:05:04 PM UTC-5, Paul wrote:
Andy wrote:
On bootup I am getting

1720 Smart hard drive detects imminent failure. (Failing attrib 5)

Backup hard drive and run HDD self test.

HDD self test said failed drive.

Can I transfer the drive to an external drive and boot to it?

I tried cloning drive to external drive, but it will not boot to it.

Internal drive has both XP and Puppy Linux.
You can clone and boot Linux.

You cannot clone and boot WinXP, unless
you find the (complicated) BootBusExtender
recipe.

When WinXP normally boots a USB hard drive,
it gets about half way through the boot. It
decided to "commission" the USB bus. When the
bus reset happens, the boot process stops, because
the reading of the hard drive has been interrupted.
It just wasn't designed to do that.

What the BootBusExtender recipe does, is tell the
OS that the USB bus is special. And that the USB
bus needs to be set up, much earlier in the boot
process.

The recipe is out there on a couple of sites,
but personally, I wouldn't waste my time doing it.
If there was a nice script that was *guaranteed*
to get the details right, I might be tempted.
But doing it by hand, I've got better things to do.

*******

What you should be aiming for *right now*.

1) Get that drive backed up, via an image backup.
For example, Macrium Reflect Free can back up both
NTFS and EXT2/3/4 type partitions. If Macrium
finds a partition type field it doesn't recognize,
it has the option of doing a sector by sector
backup. For partition types it recognizes, it
does "intelligent" copying, and only the
clusters with data in them get copied.

2) The image file (.MRIMG) should be stored on
the external drive. It will be the sum size,
of all the data written to the original drive.
A 500GB drive with 100GB of data on it,
makes a 100GB MRIMG file.

3) Later, you shut down (for the last time) with
the broken drive inside the PC. Pull the broken
drive, replace with a brand new empty drive.

4) Boot with the Macrium Reflect emergency boot CD.
This is the one you make, right after installing
Macrium Reflect. The emergency boot CD provides
a runtime environment for the restore operation.
The restore will copy the external image (MRIMG)
back to the blank internal drive.

5) Once the restore is complete, you can attempt
the dual boot options on the fresh drive. Boot
WinXP, make sure it works. Boot Linux, make sure
it works.

You should not leave the old drive sitting in the
PC for step (4) or (5). The old drive, the I/O cables
are disconnected at the end of step (3). This is
to prevent problems on the first boot of the
copied WinXP OS. If the clone sees itself on
the original disk, it "becomes confused" and
will be damaged by the experience. Always
boot a clone, with the original disconnected,
for the first boot. Once the newly minted drive
has booted once with WinXP on it, it should be
fine after that.

More tools than Macrium can do the backup image.
Each tool must have a "bare metal restore
emergency boot CD", so you have something
to use during the restore.

Your priority at the moment (the clock is
ticking), is to *make sure* you have a backup
copy (not a clone), of the original disk. That's
because, some people clone to an external USB
that they cannot figure out how to disassemble.
If your external USB disk is a home-brew with
easy screwdriver access, then clone to your
hearts content. But some Seagate made USB drives,
are the devil to get open. (No, I don't
recommend sawing them open.) If your external
is that sort of contraption, instead just
put an image of the affected disk on the
external, until you can buy and install
a blank new internal drive.

Paul
I have always had batch/scripts to backup files to an external drive.

Old system was an HP 6730b.

It's not worth buying another drive for a 10+ old system.

So, I lost nothing but some extra time.

I am now using a HP G60 with 3 Gb of RAM.

Will a 2.5 inch SATA drive fit any laptop ?

Thanks,
Andy

Yes and no.

If you search online for a 2.5" 2TB external USB
hard drive, you may think "Oh, there is a dandy
big drive inside there. Wouldn't that be
wonderful in my laptop". Well, that won't
work, as those (huge) 2.5" SATA drives are
15mm high. The 15mm drives are not available
for retail sales, as a separate item, due to
the height issue. The 15mm leaves the maker
room for an additional platter.

The laptop hard drive bay is of limited vertical dimension.
Maybe 9.5mm and 12.5mm ? No room for a 15mm.

SSDs can come as 7mm with a 2.5mm plastic ring
to fit on top of them. To give a snug fit (if the
unit pinches the vertical dimension).

Normally, you would expect the laptop to have a
hard drive tray, four screws fit the drive to the
tray, more screws hold the tray in position. The
tray slides into the SATA connector. The 2.5" and
3.5" SATA connectors are the same size and pin count.

The SATA power connector (15 pin) has room for
three power rails. 3.3V, 5V, 12V (3 contacts in
parallel for each rail). 5V and 12V are used
for desktop drives. 5V alone is used for laptop
drives. Some of the smaller 1.8" drives, use 3.3V
and also use a microSATA connector. So while there
are some variations, you can use your desktop
cabling to work on a mix of 2.5" and 3.5" drives.
If you need to copy files onto them and so on.

Fitting a laptop drive isn't hard. Check the thickness
of the drive, figure out whether the bay has room for
just 9.5mm or can take 12.5mm. In extreme cases, a
poorly designed laptop bay, may be thermally constrained,
and can only take a 5400 RPM drive (as they would
run cooler if there is no cooling air). It'll be your
best guess, as to whether your laptop design is poorly cooled
or not. If it came with a 7200 RPM drive, chances are
there isn't a thermal problem. If it always seems to
come with a 5400 RPM drive, you have to wonder whether
there is a potential issue or not.

Paul

The hard drive is 10 mm in height.

Andy

Andy wrote:
On Wednesday, June 1, 2016 at 2:39:33 PM UTC-5, Paul wrote:
Andy wrote:
On Tuesday, May 31, 2016 at 9:53:25 PM UTC-5, Andy wrote:
On Sunday, May 29, 2016 at 5:05:04 PM UTC-5, Paul wrote:
Andy wrote:
On bootup I am getting

1720 Smart hard drive detects imminent failure. (Failing attrib 5)

Backup hard drive and run HDD self test.

HDD self test said failed drive.

Can I transfer the drive to an external drive and boot to it?

I tried cloning drive to external drive, but it will not boot to it.

Internal drive has both XP and Puppy Linux.
You can clone and boot Linux.

You cannot clone and boot WinXP, unless
you find the (complicated) BootBusExtender
recipe.

When WinXP normally boots a USB hard drive,
it gets about half way through the boot. It
decided to "commission" the USB bus. When the
bus reset happens, the boot process stops, because
the reading of the hard drive has been interrupted.
It just wasn't designed to do that.

What the BootBusExtender recipe does, is tell the
OS that the USB bus is special. And that the USB
bus needs to be set up, much earlier in the boot
process.

The recipe is out there on a couple of sites,
but personally, I wouldn't waste my time doing it.
If there was a nice script that was *guaranteed*
to get the details right, I might be tempted.
But doing it by hand, I've got better things to do.

*******

What you should be aiming for *right now*.

1) Get that drive backed up, via an image backup.
For example, Macrium Reflect Free can back up both
NTFS and EXT2/3/4 type partitions. If Macrium
finds a partition type field it doesn't recognize,
it has the option of doing a sector by sector
backup. For partition types it recognizes, it
does "intelligent" copying, and only the
clusters with data in them get copied.

2) The image file (.MRIMG) should be stored on
the external drive. It will be the sum size,
of all the data written to the original drive.
A 500GB drive with 100GB of data on it,
makes a 100GB MRIMG file.

3) Later, you shut down (for the last time) with
the broken drive inside the PC. Pull the broken
drive, replace with a brand new empty drive.

4) Boot with the Macrium Reflect emergency boot CD.
This is the one you make, right after installing
Macrium Reflect. The emergency boot CD provides
a runtime environment for the restore operation.
The restore will copy the external image (MRIMG)
back to the blank internal drive.

5) Once the restore is complete, you can attempt
the dual boot options on the fresh drive. Boot
WinXP, make sure it works. Boot Linux, make sure
it works.

You should not leave the old drive sitting in the
PC for step (4) or (5). The old drive, the I/O cables
are disconnected at the end of step (3). This is
to prevent problems on the first boot of the
copied WinXP OS. If the clone sees itself on
the original disk, it "becomes confused" and
will be damaged by the experience. Always
boot a clone, with the original disconnected,
for the first boot. Once the newly minted drive
has booted once with WinXP on it, it should be
fine after that.

More tools than Macrium can do the backup image.
Each tool must have a "bare metal restore
emergency boot CD", so you have something
to use during the restore.

Your priority at the moment (the clock is
ticking), is to *make sure* you have a backup
copy (not a clone), of the original disk. That's
because, some people clone to an external USB
that they cannot figure out how to disassemble.
If your external USB disk is a home-brew with
easy screwdriver access, then clone to your
hearts content. But some Seagate made USB drives,
are the devil to get open. (No, I don't
recommend sawing them open.) If your external
is that sort of contraption, instead just
put an image of the affected disk on the
external, until you can buy and install
a blank new internal drive.

Paul
I have always had batch/scripts to backup files to an external drive.

Old system was an HP 6730b.

It's not worth buying another drive for a 10+ old system.

So, I lost nothing but some extra time.

I am now using a HP G60 with 3 Gb of RAM.
Will a 2.5 inch SATA drive fit any laptop ?

Thanks,
Andy
Yes and no.

If you search online for a 2.5" 2TB external USB
hard drive, you may think "Oh, there is a dandy
big drive inside there. Wouldn't that be
wonderful in my laptop". Well, that won't
work, as those (huge) 2.5" SATA drives are
15mm high. The 15mm drives are not available
for retail sales, as a separate item, due to
the height issue. The 15mm leaves the maker
room for an additional platter.

The laptop hard drive bay is of limited vertical dimension.
Maybe 9.5mm and 12.5mm ? No room for a 15mm.

SSDs can come as 7mm with a 2.5mm plastic ring
to fit on top of them. To give a snug fit (if the
unit pinches the vertical dimension).

Normally, you would expect the laptop to have a
hard drive tray, four screws fit the drive to the
tray, more screws hold the tray in position. The
tray slides into the SATA connector. The 2.5" and
3.5" SATA connectors are the same size and pin count.

The SATA power connector (15 pin) has room for
three power rails. 3.3V, 5V, 12V (3 contacts in
parallel for each rail). 5V and 12V are used
for desktop drives. 5V alone is used for laptop
drives. Some of the smaller 1.8" drives, use 3.3V
and also use a microSATA connector. So while there
are some variations, you can use your desktop
cabling to work on a mix of 2.5" and 3.5" drives.
If you need to copy files onto them and so on.

Fitting a laptop drive isn't hard. Check the thickness
of the drive, figure out whether the bay has room for
just 9.5mm or can take 12.5mm. In extreme cases, a
poorly designed laptop bay, may be thermally constrained,
and can only take a 5400 RPM drive (as they would
run cooler if there is no cooling air). It'll be your
best guess, as to whether your laptop design is poorly cooled
or not. If it came with a 7200 RPM drive, chances are
there isn't a thermal problem. If it always seems to
come with a 5400 RPM drive, you have to wonder whether
there is a potential issue or not.

Paul

The hard drive is 10 mm in height.

Andy

So that's a 9.5mm then.

There is a table of values here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive

2.5-inch 5mm,
7mm, [common SSD dimension, uses 2.5mm plastic ring]
9.5mm, [laptop]
12.5mm, [laptop]
15mm [external USB enclosure only]
19mm

Paul

Charlie+ wrote:
On Wed, 01 Jun 2016 16:37:25 -0400, Paul wrote as
underneath :

snip
So that's a 9.5mm then.

There is a table of values here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive

2.5-inch 5mm,
7mm, [common SSD dimension, uses 2.5mm plastic ring]
9.5mm, [laptop]
12.5mm, [laptop]
15mm [external USB enclosure only]
19mm

Hi Paul, Looking to replace a recently failed SATA (2010) WD 5000AAKS
500GB HDD 3.5 box mounted and containing backups for that box for ~5
years, I trawled around to look at reliability of 2.5 1TB and 2TB for
USB connection with the idea for the user to separate the backups from
the box after every backup.
Thus covering the modern ransomware possible problem and also to stop
powered up time that the box mounted WD 3.5 drive probably died from.
Looking at Amazon customer feedback for these 2.5 drives didnt fill me
with joy for this route! Quite a few tales of woe from fast and slower
(1 year) failure. C+

It's good then, that someone else tested them for us :-)

A lot of platters, and a small form factor, can't
be helping matters. Apparently, they can use
4 platters in a 15mm height.

http://www.storagereview.com/2tb_wes...driv e_review

Paul

On Thursday, June 2, 2016 at 6:37:19 AM UTC-5, Paul wrote:
Charlie+ wrote:
On Wed, 01 Jun 2016 16:37:25 -0400, Paul wrote as
underneath :

snip
So that's a 9.5mm then.

There is a table of values here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive

2.5-inch 5mm,
7mm, [common SSD dimension, uses 2.5mm plastic ring]
9.5mm, [laptop]
12.5mm, [laptop]
15mm [external USB enclosure only]
19mm

Hi Paul, Looking to replace a recently failed SATA (2010) WD 5000AAKS
500GB HDD 3.5 box mounted and containing backups for that box for ~5
years, I trawled around to look at reliability of 2.5 1TB and 2TB for
USB connection with the idea for the user to separate the backups from
the box after every backup.
Thus covering the modern ransomware possible problem and also to stop
powered up time that the box mounted WD 3.5 drive probably died from.
Looking at Amazon customer feedback for these 2.5 drives didnt fill me
with joy for this route! Quite a few tales of woe from fast and slower
(1 year) failure. C+

It's good then, that someone else tested them for us :-)

A lot of platters, and a small form factor, can't
be helping matters. Apparently, they can use
4 platters in a 15mm height.

http://www.storagereview.com/2tb_wes...driv e_review

Paul

thanks,
Andy