[tjpearson]

Now I've got your attention. I'm installing a new hard drive to my laptop and I read all the fear about wearing a special wrist band and earthing yourself to the core of the earth before mucking about with the pc contents. Would it not be feesible to just wear a thin tight fitting pair of pink rubber kitchen gloves, surely no static charge would pass from me to the components using this method. Am I being stupid, sorry if I am but it seems logical to me !

[Mike0001]

Er, I think rubber can carry a static charge too.

As long as you sit near an earthed bit of metal and touch it regularly, don't shuffle your feret too much on the carpet and don't whip yourself with cat fur you should be alright!

[tjpearson]

Oh no, Drrrr, thanks for the advice. I've just had visions of me with the kids rubbing their balloons on my chest and sticking them to the ceiling, mega static, god I feel stupid, sorry. I'll get my coat and static wrist band !!!

[Mike0001]

Originally Posted by tjpearson

Oh no, Drrrr, thanks for the advice. I've just had visions of me with the kids rubbing their balloons on my chest and sticking them to the ceiling, mega static, god I feel stupid, sorry. I'll get my coat and static wrist band !!!

"Mmmm!" Sits there with rubber gloves on, says "Let's see now" and rubs hands on woolly pullover before reaching out for metal case of HDD...

[tjpearson]

OK, OK, feel bad enough as it is.Just thinking my wife shouting "what was that bang", me with me pink gloves on and a smoking laptop in front of me, or stuck to the ceiling.

[Mike0001]

Our dog just ran in I was laughing so much.

[tjpearson]

Come on then Mike0001, any advice about what hard drive I can put in my Compaq Presario R3000, I mean can it be any 3rd party hard drive that I can buy from MicroDirect or Scan. Is there anything I should be looking out for.

[Mike0001]

I bought a 160Gb for my laptop (Seagate I think), but that is only a couple of years old. An older Dell refused to recognize the drive's true size, that is the problem. It was happy with a fast Hitachi 60Gb drive though.

Older BIOSes aren't up to large HDDs.

I bought from Dabs.

What do you have now?

[tjpearson]

I have no idea, scared to open it up until I've got the replacement drive at hand. The laptop is 4 years old, £1500 new but I'm sure I paid over the odds. It's a Compaq Presario R3000, I run XP and an external Maxtor 300GB. Problem is that I'm sure the drive is goosed as it works just about for surfing and light use only, if I push it then problems start. Self diognostic tests show bad sectors. Decided for £40ish might as well put in new drive and I'm dropping Microsoft with the decission to install and only use 'ubuntu' as the operating system. I mainly use the laptop for photograhy. Just concerned as I'm new to opening up these things and what compatability is like. I was thinking of '80GB Western Digital 2.5 inch 5400 Scorpio 8MB cache ATA100' available from Micro Direct, they are based in my part of the country as well so if any problems would be easy to exchange.

[Mike0001]

That sounds good. Do you know where the HDD is on this model? On some you remove a screw and pull it out in its caddy but on others you need to scrabble about inside under the keyboard. Neither is difficult but you need to watch those tiny screws that insist on pinging across the room! You should be able to download a workshop manual cheaply. This site

http://www.electronicmanuals.co.uk/?...FQhCMAod9kNfzA

provides them at low cost.