New Hard Drive for a Laptop

Yes, recently I have been on an extended stay in England and rather than carry my extremely bulky and heavy laptop all around England and scotland, i invested in a portable hard drive case, took the hard drive out of my computer and used it as an external hard drive.

BUT... of course, somebody steals my bag, so not only do i lose my hard drive (and my camera and a load of other important stuff), I now have a laptop without a hard drive.

so just to make sure before i potentially waste more money is...

I can just put the new hard disk into the laptop right (i have to install an OS i know, but i just want to check)

also
i know there are two types of hard drive - IDE and SATA i think, but i cant really find out which is the one i want. I recall my hard drive had spikes (for the best description) does that make it a IDE?

If it had spikes coming out of it then it was an IDE drive. Also the size of laptop drives are 2.5 inches so keep that in mind. You should have no problem replacing the drive unless you get the wrong kind.

This, a concise and good answer :)

If your laptop is relatively new then it might have an accelerometer installed, in which case you should try to find a hard drive with build in g-shock protection

Thanks that really helps - I was scared of getting the wrong one and I've already lost quite a bit... Bloody theives

But again thank you, really appericate it :)