Symptoms of a failing hard drive sometimes include the Windows BSOD (blue screen of death, a clicking noise from the unit and spontaneous rebooting of the system during the boot process. If your laptop is exhibiting all three of those symptoms or even two out of three of those symptoms, then there is a really good chance that your hard drive has crashed. When it gets to the point where it makes a clicking sound all the time, that is a pretty good indication that your data is probably unrecoverable. Hope you had it backed up.
Replacing a laptop hard drive is pretty darn simple in the grand scheme of things. Most laptops have two screws on the bottom of the computer that cover the hard drive access panel. You will need to remove those screws to get to the hard drive. Some computer manufacturers have the hard drive slide right out the side of the computer after taking out one or two bottom cover screws. Some manufacturers secure the drives inside the cases better than that.
If you have an older laptop, then it is possible that you might have the old ATA6 version of HDD. That old version will have a series of shiny metal pins that stick out from the drive itself. Be careful not to bend any of those pins on your replacement part or else you will ruin it.
You can still get those older models, but they are getting harder and harder to find. Plus they cost a little more than your SATA variety. Most of the newer laptops have Serial ATA models referred to as SATA. They are more durable and you don’t need to worry about the pins bending or breaking easily.
***Important Note – Hard drives come in different speeds. The speed of your hard drive will make a huge difference in the performance of the computer. Make sure you are getting a 7200RPM drive or faster. A lot of the manufacturers are pumping out cheaper 5400RPM versions which cause degraded computer performance. A lot of technicians will tell you that it doesn’t make that big of a difference, but it does. The cost difference between the slower and faster versions is not enough to justify saving a few bucks. Trust me. You are far better off getting that 7200RPM drive or even a solid state drive if you can afford one. The solid state drives are referred to as SSD.
Here is a video that shows a typical hard drive replacement in a laptop.
