The primary hard drive in my laptop is starting to fail, I can see it completely conking out in the next couple of weeks. Obviously I'm backing everything onto an external at the moment, but I just want to know, how easy is it to fit a replacement for the hard drive in a laptop? I'd have no problem doing it myself for a desktop, but I've never opened up the back of a laptop so I'm kinda wary about DIY fixing this.

The primary hard drive in my laptop is starting to fail, I can see it completely conking out in the next couple of weeks. Obviously I'm backing everything onto an external at the moment, but I just want to know, how easy is it to fit a replacement for the hard drive in a laptop? I'd have no problem doing it myself for a desktop, but I've never opened up the back of a laptop so I'm kinda wary about DIY fixing this.

 

It depends. Does your laptop have an easy access panel? If it does, then it is relatively simple. If not, you'll have to take the whole laptop apart (and is therefore probably safer under the hands of a trained technician.

The primary hard drive in my laptop is starting to fail, I can see it completely conking out in the next couple of weeks. Obviously I'm backing everything onto an external at the moment, but I just want to know, how easy is it to fit a replacement for the hard drive in a laptop? I'd have no problem doing it myself for a desktop, but I've never opened up the back of a laptop so I'm kinda wary about DIY fixing this.

 

It depends. Does your laptop have an easy access panel? If it does, then it is relatively simple. If not, you'll have to take the whole laptop apart (and is therefore probably safer under the hands of a trained technician.

 

Threres no access panel on the bottom, but I have no idea how much it would cost to get somebody to fit a new drive. I know for a fact they'd be robbing me blind : /

also are laptop hard drives noticably more expensive? Or are they exactly the same? I honeslty have no idea about laptops at all.

250GB hard drives are around £40, 500GB hard drives are around £65. First you'd have to find out whether the technician bases prices items on time or the procedure (I assume that almost all with base it on procedure, rather than time). If it's time based, then it shouldn't be that much, but if it's based on the procedure performed, it's going to cost quite a bit. I've never had a laptop before (getting one in 2 months), but I assume the charge would be around £50-£100, maybe more. Obviously, this is just a complete guess, so it'd be better to get someone who knows about these type of repairs to give a cost estimate.

Replacing a laptop HDD is usually simple, if a tad fiddly. I'd charge about £10 to install if it had an access panel or £30 if it's a bit more complicated. However, shops will probably charge about £35 to £40.