HDD dead

Mr.Carioca · 03-12-2008, 06:26 PM

My apologize guys,

I meant my old Dell HDD has died and I don't want to buy a hard drive so what else could I use as a HDD-replacement (instead of buying a new Hard Drive)

so I already know about Pen Drive (Linux OS inside of a Pen Driver) and about LiveCD-LiveDDVD (which doesn't require the need of a HDD).
So what else is available?

Well I hope you guys understand.

Thank you once again.

pljvaldez · 03-12-2008, 06:35 PM

I'm not sure what you're asking? What do you mean by dead? Is it a complete hardware failure? Does the drive spin, but the partition table is borked, so it won't boot?

What do you want to do - just get on the internet until you can get a new drive? Then yes a Live CD or usb drive could do the trick.

H_TeXMeX_H · 03-13-2008, 08:33 AM

Take the old one out, put a new one in. If you have really important data on the HDD that died, you can probably send it to a special place and have them recover the data ... usually at a rather high price because of the delicacy of the operation that must be performed: opening the HDD case, mounting the disk on a working support, spinning it up and getting the data, all done in the clean room.

Mr.Carioca · 03-13-2008, 02:10 PM

My apologize guys,

I meant my old Dell HDD has died and I don't want to buy a hard drive so what else could I use as a HDD-replacement (instead of buying a new Hard Drive)

so I already know about Pen Drive (Linux OS inside of a Pen Driver) and about LiveCD-LiveDDVD (which doesn't require the need of a HDD).

Well I hope you guys understand.

Thank you once again.

jay73 · 03-13-2008, 06:23 PM

Well, I guess that about wraps it up. And none of your alternatives are really good alternatives without having a HDD as well. You can't save anything to a liveDVD and your pen drive is going to wear quite fast without a HDD to write temporary files to. Now that drives are so cheap, I'd check out a computer shop and get a small one.

Electro · 03-13-2008, 06:59 PM

Try find a service on the Internet that stores your data and it mounts as a network drive. You will need to worry about the upload bandwidth of your Internet connection.

With out a hard drive, your options are very limited. None of the options are inexpensive as a mechanical hard drive.

FYI, Dell does not make hard drives.

crashmeister · 03-14-2008, 05:43 AM

I used puppy linux on a laptop with a dead hdd.The upside is that you can burn it on DVD and use the empty space on the dvd for storage.The downside is that it is still only a couple of gig and you are limited by your RAM in what you can run since there is no swap.

Pendrives are pretty slow compared to hdd's.

I'd just get a drive and be done with it if you feel there is some mileage left in the box.