Help!

[bobf]

I'm in dire straits, everybody! My old Dell Latitude C640 appears to have properly toasted its 120GB HDD (it gets WAY hot on the bottom - memory chips!?)

I desperately need to replace it, or consign it to oblivion (haters gotta hate, hate, hate! <^8#) I can buy a 128GB SSD - yes, 2.5", IDE - which I'd like to think could tolerate the heat in there better than mechanical, and not contribute more of its own! But $113., probably in $US, *plus* the rudeness from FedEx et al for brokerage/tariff/duty, etc., is 'WAY beyond the worth of the C640. Can't sanction it... And there are a number of clowns on eBay selling 2.5" mechanical drives as "Laptop" when clearly, in the photos, they're marked "Not for laptop use" - they're for game consoles, PVRs, etc., and presumably don't have a lot of shock resistance, etc., built into them. And then there's the "reclaimed", the "refurbished", and, of course, the "AS-IS - pulled from a working unit..." drivel. But no new ones (naturally), and even an 80GB would be close to useful, but anything smaller, now, probably wouldn't make the grade. And for the equivalent price on eBay of a 2TB desktop OEM SATA hard drive new out of the store...!!

*Any* chance someone has an old'ish IDE notebook drive that can fill the bill?

Thanks, everyone... (but BOY, would that SSD be nice... and they had 32GBs & 64GBs... still PRICEY!!)

[Jason]

I have a 250 GB from my dead ThinkPad (which I believe died because of a graphics issue). Unfortunately, it's SATA. I don't know if you have room inside your laptop for a SATA-to-IDE adapter. I'll plug it into my desktop later and make sure it still works in case you can use it. No charge if you want it.

If my memory serves correctly, Mike might have a 120 GB SSD sitting around somewhere. He was offering to sell it on the cheap way back when.

[ssfc72]

I have 2 portable mechanical usb drives, that I would think would be IDE (because SATA wasn't around when I bought them).
One is only 40 G but the other is 80 G.

These have very few hours of use, on them.

If you think this might be suitable, for you, Bob, I will take the 80 G out of it's enclosure, to see if it has an IDE connector.