Dell faulty HDD

[monutdfc]

I have a Dell Inspiron laptop and the hard drive has gone. Not sure if it will be covered by warranty - it had a fall and was serviced by a non-Dell service engineer, so I expect that will invalidate the warranty (although this problem is unrelated I think).
Anyway, a new one is €170 from Dell. There are bigger capacity ones for half the price on DABS.ie (thanks to foot.ie for that link). The interface is described as Serial ATA for both the Dell and the DABS one. Question - will it fit in my laptop? That is, are these standard 'plug and play' like PCI cards?

The side of the Dell one is not square, it is sort of trapezoid shaped - I don't care if there's a gap in the side of the laptop where the new one goes in.

[monutdfc]

Just spoke with the man in Peats and yes, they are all standard size, so should be ok to buy one online (although Peats weren't too dear either, for once, might buy off them)

[Deckydee]

Usually if I have a hard disk that fails, I do the following.

Accept that it has failed and put the very same type in my machine

Take the old hard disk and place it is an ice-box with a USB connection and get my info back that way

hope that is good advice :)

[francesco_1]

Dell are robber's and i know i work for them ....well atleast for a few months, once the harddrive u buy is SATA it will be fine, what ever Hell are charging you you will get on ebay including delivery for 45-50% less,the big thing here is if your harddrive is gone you u wont be able to boot up as your operation system will be stored on it and u will have more problems,if u get a new harddrive switch to linux and just pick up a free live cd and away you go.

[monutdfc]

Thanks for the advice Deckydee and Francesco.
I got Dell tech support to agree it was gone (took 4 attempts though) and they would replace it under warranty; they sent the replacement today. I bought a case on Saturday for €15 to hook it up to my desktop via USB and was able to pull most saved stuff of it (we hadn't much on it anyway). Then I downloaded some software to completely wipe the drive, as Dell said they wanted the broken one back. However, when they delivered it today they didn't want the old one back. Courier said they might be sent to take it back in a couple of days.

[monutdfc]

ps I don't know if Windows is pre-installed on the new one - if not I think I will take the advice of many here and install Linux or Ubunto os.