2014-10-30

I know I'm asking an obviously dumb question. I just hope that it might not be a waste of time. I fixed my daughter's Toshiba 5105-S501 Windows XP laptop in 2009 by luck, but its hard drive finally died in 2012. Since a replacement hard drive costs over $200 and I am not ready to donate the machine to a recyle place, I wonder if anyone has found a novel way to utilize a laptop without an internal hard drive. I've a few spare external ones in the house.

Any suggestions will be much appreciated.

julianvb

You could use an SD card, or any USB drive. I've used SD cards, flash drives of various sizes, and external HDDs. As long as the BIOS can boot from an external drive, you can install the OS on it.

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http://puppylinux.org/wikka/MultiSessionLiveDVD

http://puppylinux.org/wikka/InstallationFrugal

http://doc.slitaz.org/en:guides:uncommoninst

http://tuxtweaks.com/2014/03/create-...tent-live-usb/

http://slackware-live.tuxfamily.org/

If the computer supports usb boot. Sgosnell suggestion and some of my links show how there are many ways to run off usb. If not supporting usb boot. Either a Plop cd with usb or a Puppy Multi-session Live DVD would be the other way to fly. I ran Linux-Lite on a persistent usb till my hard drive came in for my Dell XT2 laptop.

I also have ran full installs off of SD cards like I show in a old how to below.
One on a 128MB SD card but I had a hard drive to put the save file on. I guess you
could put the save file on cd or dvd also for the method I used but I had a hard drive
available.

http://yatsite.blogspot.com/2009/07/...s-eee-900.html

my 128MB install (not a how to)

http://forums.solydxk.com/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=1858

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I'd think one could buy a small laptop ssd for $40 and RTV glue it in. Maybe a used mechanical for less. Does it have to be special?

Kind of hard to decide if you can boot to a usb or not in that age system.

I'd think that one could buy a cheap ide to sd card adapter if not easy to boot to usb. Usb would be one of the most easy. An adapter and card might run $30. A usb flash maybe $8. 16G ought to be OK for most home users.

If one has a fast internet and they don't mind waiting there are a few places one can use gpxe to boot to internet location for basic uses.

One could use a local computer to also network boot.

There are some issues too that you may wish to look at. Ram and pae.

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Hi, Everyone,

Thank you so much for your good advice.

Unforutnately my Toshiba laptop came with a stupid and frustrating graphical 'BIOS'. I really would not call it a BIOS. When the machine was working right, I had to race to select the desired boot-up source's icon. If I wasn't fast enough, the internal hard drive would be automatically selected. I tolerated this brainless arrangwement only because I got the machine for free from my daughter and felt a measure of satisfaction after I fixed it.

julianvbw

$200 for a hard drive??? What kind and from where? I've seen 1TB units for $59.

But honestly, that machine is VERY old, and very slow. You can get a Chromebook brand-new for $189, and if all your daughter is doing is web/email and wants to use Google docs, you're all set. A 'real' laptop can be had for cheap too. For example, this one:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...9SIA2KS22D9384

A refurbished (with full mfg. warranty) Dell D531, 2GB of RAM, 80GB HDD, wifi, is $139. Is the time/energy you spend getting a 12 year old laptop working, worth that?

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Congratulations on being a recycler. That's a perfectly good computer: my laptop is older!

You say you've got some external HDs. I'd just try one, if the BIOS can be switched to use USB. For a computer of that age, "use USB" generally means an external drive with USB connection — a USB memory stick is often rejected.

If the RAM is as supplied, you have 512MB. I'd say the best bet would be Antix MX (rather than the standard Antix).
http://www.linuxquestions.org/review...p?product=2933

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AntiX 13.2 full should run on it OK; from CD or Pendrive, (or SDcard usb adapter even).
With no HDD in it, it should boot from the next available boot source.

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I would normally look to ebay for replacement parts, and there I'm seeing used IDE laptop hard drives for under $10, with free shipping too. These are pulled from decommissioned/recycled laptops and some vendors test them and have some sort of warranty or refund option in the event the thing doesn't work. With the boot selector that you described, it will be more convenient to use a hard drive than USB or SD.

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Hi, Everyone,

I'm a World War II product and retired electrical engineer. I love to tinkle with things around the house and try to see and utilize hidden merits in things old or new. In other words, I derive immmense pleasure out of creating and revivng things without wasting money. I've four (old) compouters still going strong in the house and running Ubuntu 12.04, Mint 17 and Windows XP.

At the moment I'm interested in salvaging my Toshiba laptop economically for plain fun and I've no desire to acquire another computer regardless of price.

I wonder if anyone has used a USB-to-SATA adapter cable with the Toshiba 5105-S501 laptop. I've just found a Samsung SSD 840 in the house but all the local computer stores in Virginia Beach don't carry such a cable.

I ran an experiment on the laptop yesterday with the internal HD removed just for fun. Naturally nothing happened when I powered up the machine with a Browser Linux live CD in the DVD drive, just a frozen screen with various boot-up icons shown at the bottom of the screen.

As I mentioned in post #5, the laptop's BIOS is inaccessible as it only consists of selectable symbols of boot-up devices. It's obviously useless though aimed to provide user-friendliness.

julianvb

I am typing from an older Toshiba laptop with the same basic processor (Pentium M) and speed (1.7ghz), although I have installed 2GB RAM. I recently replaced the hard drive with a 1TB for about $60 and couldn't be happier!

That said, I also have a much older Dell laptop with no hard drive and only PCMCIA network support. I created a dedicated boot CD using DSL which brings up my network. I then mount an NFS directory or two for persistence and whatever I am working on. It makes a terrific smart terminal or second console for my primary system.

So if you choose to not replace the HDD for whatever reason, you can still put it to good use booting DSL (or Puppy as noted by rokytnji, or others). If you have another machine to provide an NFS mount you can still do a lot with it!

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Before I spent any money on that. Get a known working 32 bit usb built maybe by usb creator or unetbootin and see if you can boot to it. Otherwise any usb attachment would be a waste of money.

The test for CD is very important. It should work. Systems of that age did have a weak cd reader. You can't fool with less than perfect cd's. Try to use anyone's windows xp or nt or 95 cd to see if it will start to boot. Those disc's are pressed not burned.

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Sounds very similar to mine. When the icons appear across bottom of the screen can you not select them using the left and right arrow keys? If the CD drive is working (mine is not) you should be able to right-arrow over to it and hit enter to boot. I do this for PXE booting as well.

After several attempts over the years, I have not been able to get it to boot from USB however, even though the BIOS indicates that it should. YMMV of course.

Hi, Everyone,

Thanks for your helpful new inputs. I finally took up Beryloss's suggestion of ordering a replacement internal HDD from eBay with free shipping for $9.99. I'll report back after I receive and install it.

By the way, I've tried booting the laptop with a live Ubuntu USB, various live Linux CDs and a Windows XP installation CD, all to no avail.

Many thanks to you all.

julianvbs

Then we have to diag this boot issue. Consider that ide controller is bad or not enabled too.