Which replacement hard drive for VGN-NR11S/S

[deejay22]

Hi, I have  a VGN-NR11S/S with a 200mb hard drive which is damaged. How do I know which hard drive is compatable for replacement?

Secondly, is it possible to partition the bad sectors and use the rest of the drive or is it simpler to replace it?

Thanks

[itbroker]

Hi Deejay22. Welcome to Club Vaio Forum :smileyhappy:.

the Sony Vaio VGN-NR11S/S notebook has a hard disk TOSHIBA MK2035GSS with a capacity of 200GB. Indeed it is a model with 4200 rpm, whose access time lie slightly behind a 5400 hard disk, but at moderate office operation this should not make much difference. Advantage of the hard disk: Low noise emissions.

You have many options for replacement. I would like to suggest to contact an authorized Technical assistance. Unfortunately, I was not able to find your country/city in your profile to suggest the nearest option.

Regarding your question :

It's possible to partition the bad sectors and use the rest of the drive or is it simpler to replace it?

You have (many or too many) specifc softwares to fix and recover bad sectors. The bad sectors that can not be recovered, will be marked in order not to be used. Here, you will find some options :

2011 Best Data Recovery Software Comparisons and Reviews - PAID Options

Data Recovery Software - Free Options

[Blencogo · Accepted solution]

I would try marking the bad sectors first and see if that helps: -

• Open (My) Computer
• Right-click on your Hard Drive
• Choose Properties
• Select the Tools Tab and click 'Check Now'
• In the popup window check both boxes to fix file systems and attempt to recover bad sectors
• It cannot check the drive while in use so click on 'Schedule Disc Check'
• Reboot and the disc check will run on restart.  The disc check can take several hours to run so make sure you have AC Power connected.
  

Alternatively you can run chkdsc /f /r C: from the command prompt.

If there are too many bad sectors and these cannot be fixed, you then should consider replacing the drive.  Any 2.5" SATA slimline drive will fit as long as it is not thicker than 9.5mm.  These now are available up to 1TB in size.

[deejay22]

Thanks for the replies. My problem is that windows does not finish loading. The windows 7 splash screen appears, I hear crunching and then the screen blanks with only the mouse arrow moving about.

I downloaded ultimate boot cd and that reported an hd error. What I can't figure out is how to copy the bad sectors to good sectors. I tried cloning the whole disk but it failed. Is there a way to do it without booting windows? I also tried booting from a bootable W7 flash usb, I chose repair but again I had no screen. I don't think the screen is tbe problem as I get one in linux programs that come with ultimate boot cd.

Alternatively, can I access on boot the recovery partition on the hard disk as that may be intact and I could hopefully work from that.

Ideally I prefer to salvage this disk both on cost grounds and becasue of the hours it would take to change the disk and set up the machine again.

Thank again.