Main Drive crashed. Need to buy a new one. [ Edited ]

[johnnygeneric]

I've got an HP Pavilion Elite d5000t ATX (about 3-4 years old) and today the hard drive gave up the ghost.  I've ordered the recovery disks and they should arrive soon.  Do I HAVE to buy an HP drive replacement?

Looking at this drive, it's 500 GB Seagate that looks to be strictly SATA.  Written on the drive are the following numbers:

S/N {Removed for privacy}

ST3500620AS

P/N 98X144-621

Firmware: HP24

Date Code 09127 Site code TK

WWN: 5000C5001051F964

CT: 28150133XWKKUQ

Dang, that's a lot of alphannums....

Can you recommend a replacement?

Sincerely,

Gary

[20YearsHPUser]

was there a small white stick on it with an HP number? if not, ST3500620AS is the seagate model. google ST3500620AS for spec.

[johnnygeneric]

Not a sticker, but another number I missed: STX-ST3500320AS (B)   But this looks similar to one of the other numbers.

[johnnygeneric]

Oh yeah, I just need to be clear on one last point:  I can put in a larger hard drive and still use the recovery disks, correct?  500gb is, well small nowadays.

[Kuerten1]

Most likely, yes. Those recovery discs are paired with your motherboard. As long as the HDD is compatible, your recovery disks should work. 

[johnnygeneric]

OK.  Bought a nice new hard drive. The Vista Recovery disks arrived today.  I started the install procedure.    Near what looks to be the end of the process I get the dreaded "windows could not complete the installation"  

Apparently, this has happened a LOT on HP computers with people in the same boat as me.  And I have not seen the solution.  HOWEVER, I did read that this is a NORMAL MESSAGE and should be ignored. But the wait time to the next step could be hours and hours.

Can you CONFIRM this for me?  

Otherwise, I'm just going to go out and buy a copy of Vista.  I've got an upgrade to Windows 7 but can't...upgrade until the Vista is installed.

I love this computer.  I'm not interested in buying another one.

[johnnygeneric]

Well, I got through that error.  But now I have a new one.  It is when it is in Windows.  The error is: windows setup cannot install windows on this hardware

Is there a limitation on the size of the hard drive?   I put in a 2TB hard drive.  If not please advise on what I can do to make this go away.

Thanks.

[Big_Dave · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Try the below suggestion.

Cyberlink recovery CD for hard drives. When you have created this CD, insert it into the system and do a restart. Wait until you see a window with a green check mark.  Then remove the CD and insert your first Recovery DVD.  Restart the PC and go through the process of installing the Operating System again.  Hopefully it should install properly this time.

If the above doesn't work, then check with the hard drive manufacturer and see if the hard drive is a advanced format model and what is required to make it work with VISTA.  Perhaps the manufacturer has an alignment utility is the drive is AF.

What is the make and model of the new hard drive?

[johnnygeneric]

You know, I had seen that from my searches but forgot about it.  OK.  I'll try that next.  Changing the BIOS for the hard drive from RAID to ACDH (or whatever the acronym is) didn't help.

The hard drive is the WD Caviar Green Model WDBAAY0020HNC-NRSN

[johnnygeneric]

Perhaps you can explain how this is supposed to work.  I burned the CD and booted the computer with this CD.  After it ran there was a final screen that explains the steps - vaguely with pictures (think IKEA). 

What exaclty did this program do?  Because after I reboot the computer with the recovery disks it proceeds to reformat the hard drive.  Where and what did the bootable CD do its magic?  Seems to me that once I reboot and start the recovery process anything it did got wiped unless it stored this info in some sort of non-volatile memory that I have never heard of.

Thanks.