Okay i think i need an ATA hard drive for my computer new egg sent the wrong one i recieved a seagate SATA drive from them. the ATA has drop in design correct? and SATA has plugs? am i right? this all started the other day my laptop died got a message on boot saying my video cables were not attached or something like that HP said i need a new hard drive! told me $489.97 i only paid 500 for the laptop which is an hp dv1000 i found a larger 120gb hard drive for 80 bucks but i got the wrong one!!!! so if anyone can tell me what i need for a hard drive it has a seagate momentus 4200 80 gb in it now im looking to upgrade to the seagate 5400.3 120gb but do i need ATA or SATA

ATA (IDE)

they seriously told you 500 bucks for a new HDD? sounds like they tried to hit you like grandma takin the car to the mechanic. charge her 2,000 for a new head and replace a 40 dollar alternator and its good as new.

HP laptops frequently have a little plastic header that fits on the pins for both IDE and SATA hard drives. It's this header that makes it "drop in".

Here's a link explaining the ATA specification and how it applies to SATA and PATA (IDE) drives: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT_Attachment

It looks like there's 30 or so DV1000's - take a look at this link to see if you can figure out which one it is: http://h20180.www2.hp.com/apps/Lookup?h_la...&submit.y=0

okay so what you are saying is i may be able to use the sata drive i got! so i should pull apart the laptop and see if i have the cables? i wish i had pictures of the connection the hard drive has 2 tabs that lock in on the back then the pins slide into the slots on the comp! then 2 screws hold it in as well as the plastic cover!!!! i am so computer illiterate it isn't even funny!!!! but yes they did quote me 489.97 for the hard drive new egg has them starting at $60.00 the one i bought was 100.00 shipped next day. i just wish i knew more about computers so i could fix this today no computer makes me really bored! and i just got the google sketch up program that i was having alot of fun with!

oh yeah its the second one on the list i believe

Scroll down to the 3rd picture
http://techreport.com/articles.x/9859
Take yours out and look at the back. There are no wire or ribbon connectors on a laptop. It just plugs straight into the system board

Remove the little plastic header from the drive that's in the computer now. Then check to see if the drive is the same as the one that you bought.

IDE (PATA) drives have a bunch of little gold pins (over 80 of them) - where a SATA drive has 2 black things that stick out with gold fingers inside the bottom of them.

The HP price for the drive probably included the OS being installed on it already - but that's still a lot to pay!

okay i played with my old hard drive a bit! it is an ATA drive they sent me the serial pin one. the little plastic header on my old drive comes right off so changing that over is no big deal! i gotta talk to newegg.com today and exchange my drives! then i get to figure out the rest of the problems like reinstalling windows and all that good stuff! thanks for the help everyone i am loving this forum already!!!!!

Once you get the new drive installed, you'll need your system recovery disks to restore the OS. If you don't have them, you can order them from HP for about $20 and you'll have them in 4 or 5 days.

Then you just put it in the CD drive, reboot the system, press "Esc" to get the boot menu, then boot from the CD drive and let it do it's thing!

thats what i thought! thanks for the conformation.

well the new harddrive works great! but i bought the external case for my old hard drive threw it in hooked it up to the usb port and it doesnt do anything it shows up as a mass storage device but i cant figure out how to get into the hard drive! any suggestions

Does the drive reflect properly in Disk Management and My Computer (DM is more important)?

Did you check the hard drive for correct placement of jumper before inserting it into the enclosure? Whatever documentation you received with the enclosure should tell you what the HD jumper setting should be before connecting/inserting.

Louis