HARD Drive Fail in Vaio

[Damo23]

Hi All, 

As per subject my hard drive (Hitachi HTS545050B9SA00 ,500G,5400RPM) failed yesterday on my vaio (VPCCEB4C5E). Depressed about it to be honest, as I did no back up (i know dodo),, anyway the Hard drive is gone to a speciliest company who hopefully will get back my data,, fingers and toes crossed. I have a few qustions and hopefully ye guys can help.

1)If i get back my data, do i just by a new hard drive and use the recovery disks.

2)Does the hard drive have to be the exact same modle/spec or can i get higher G and RPM, will this work.

3)Will the recovery disk work with new hard drive, same or differant. 

4) If new hard drive is not the ans and wont work, what are my options, new laptop, sell vaio for parts??

Thanks for your help in advance

[rich912 · Accepted solution]

Hi Damo23,

I don't have the specifications for this hard drive but my guess is that it is a 512-byte per sector drive as opposed to the more recent 4096-byte structure drives termed 'Advanced Format' drives.

Your recovery media should work with any 512-byte sector replacement drive but will fail to work with an Advanced Format drive if the media was created on a 512 byte sector drive.

The recovery media will install the original operating system plus the hidden recovery partition and preinstalled Sony software. You will of course need to reinstate your personal data, if available, and third party software. You  will also have to download and install all updates, both Microsoft and Sony, since the time of purchase.

Rich