Replacing the hard drive on my Lifebook NH570

I have had this computer for the best part or 4 years now. It is a remarkably good machine - well engineered and pleasant to use. However, the disk drive on it now appears to have gone dead. When I enter the boot menu 2 times out of 4 the hard disk not preset at all. At other times it tells me that a cable is unpluggged and urges me to fix that problem. The rest of the time it is present, I can boot up from it but it all ends badly - the familiar Blue Screen of Death sooner rather than later.

My choices

• Bid farewell to the machine and get a new one.
• Attempt to replace the drive. What keeps me from doing it
  • The fact that the boot menu does not always show the drive perhaps means that the problem lies elsewhere, not on the drive?
  • I have found Kingston SSDNow V300 drives on sale at fairly reasonable prices. However, I have no idea how hard or easy it would be to replace the drive.

I am hoping that someone on this forum will be able to give me some tips and advice.

 

It may not be a harddrive problem?

It could be a cmos/motherboard battery that requires replacing.

Before you replace the harddrive,”if you can” try these processes

Leave the computer for two or more days before using it,this will
drain the motherboard battery “if faulty”, and you should be receiving
the same type of messages.

Second only leave it off overnight if the reporting faults are not
present and as often then it's more than likely to be the cmos/motherboard battery.

 

Why would the CMS/Motherboard battery cause the hard disk to be intermittently invisible to the BIOS? The other drives - CD, USB etc - seem to be seen quite consistently. That apart how do I go about replacing that battery? From the looks of it the Fujitsu is a rarther thoughtfully designed machine and the disk, memory etc can be accessed via little panels held in place with just one or two screws. Not sure about that battery though.

 

The cmos battery stores the computers setup settings

An example of this is: noting what video card is on board,
what harddrive setting are required for that make or size of drive,
screen instructions,etc.

If the battery fails then the motherboard fails to identify various hardware.
By restarting a computer with a flat battery it may report problems detecting them.





Physically replacing the hard drive is very simple, it usually only requires removing
two cover screws,and up to four hard drive bracket screws.

Most laptops have a removable cover on the underside of the laptop.

The other procedure is to either clone/copy one drive to another or
reloading the system from dvd disks that came with the machine.

Sometimes you may have to make a set of dvd's recovery disks from the recovery
program that was preinstalled on the laptop.

 

You will have to obtain a service manual online either free or paid, in order
to instruct you on how to replace the cmos battery.

I have been unable to locate one “given time constraints”
it will not be easy to replace, here's a picture link showing the battery type required.

Always shop around.




http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Pile-CMOS...04?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_71&hash=item1e904e4b0c

 

Beginners-guide-to-the-bios

http://www.laptop-forums.com/threads/beginners-guide-to-the-bios.24232/

 

Hard drives are usually one of the easiest parts to replace in a computer. If you really need the computer to be up and running quickly at a minimum cost then getting an SSD would be the best. Then the next time you buy a full machine, you can move the SSD over so you can still get the same drive speed/performance you did with the other machine.