Help finding correct hard drive.

[Diesel 724]

My HP Pavilion 23-b231 All-in-One errors on boot saying hard drive is toast basically. I tore into it and recoveres the stock hard drives info. It says Seagate Barracuda 500GB, S/N S2AG37JZ, ST500DM002, P/N1BD142-021, Firmware HP73.

I am looking for a new hard drive. One, i am not sure if it is a 2.5" or 3.5" and when getting a new hard drive do ALL those numbers have to match up? We need our computer pretty fast. So im trying to eliminate as much down time as possible. Also the computer had Win8 stock, we dont have a recovery disc or OS disc, and i didnt get to call HP yet, i do have a Win7 disc, is it possible to just throw that on there until i figure something out with Win8?

 

[SchizTech]

The model number "ST500DM002" comes up as a 3.5" SATA drive. You don't need to match the exact drive, any 3.5" SATA is compatible, you can upgrade to a larger HDD if you choose or go with a different brand.

You need a valid Windows 7 license key to install Windows 7, and one that isn't installed somewhere already (a key can only be used on one PC at a time). If you have this key that will get you going, otherwise you need to order a HP recovery disk

 

[Diesel 724]

Awesome, so the firmware and stuff dosent matter? Just as long as it is a model ST500DM002 or equivilent? 500Gb is enough for us. Just wanted to make sure we made the correct purchase. I will also look into a recovery from HP but wanted to make sure I could use my 7 in the mean time because im not sure if a win8 will cost money. I know to flat out buy an OS is not cheap.. i play with computers alot but never really had to do hardware work other then NIC cards and drives like DVD burners. I know how to and have pulled this hard drive just didnt know enough about them to know what numbers were important and not.

 

[Solandri]

Any SATA hard drive will work. (Edit: let me qualify that - try to stay under 2 TB since the larger drives sometimes cause problems in older systems.) Since the original is a 3.5", you could even put in a 2.5" or a SSD if you like. The CPU on this computer is pretty low-end so I'm not sure a SSD is worth it. But clearly you were technically competent enough to remove the HDD. If you ever replace the computer with a newer, faster one, you could transplant the SSD into the new computer.

If you don't have a Win 8 recovery disk, HP may sell one to you. Most vendors charge like $15 to cover the disk cost and shipping. Win 7 may or may not work depending on if Win 7 drivers for the computer are available on HP's website.

 

[Diesel 724]

Thank you, will put in an order tonight for a new hard drive. Im just going to stick with a Seagate 500gb ST500DM002. I see your point on the win7 and drivers. I will contact HP tomorrow.

Is the discs the only way to get win8 back on? Weird thing is i got a error on black screen booting, saying Error: No hard disk detected ect something, and somehow i was able to get into a HP recovery and reformat the hard drive but now i get blue screened saying "Recovery, your PC needs to be repaired, The boot configuration Data file dosent contain valid information for an operating system, File \BCD Error Code 0xc0000098"

It used to do thag black screen about the hard drive one out of every 20 boots and i had to keep hitting CTRL ALT DELETE to retry to boot and eventually it would boot. Now it will not at all so i tryed to recovery and formatted the hard drive now blue screen up above every time.

This is even after i pulled the hard drive out and cleaned everything making sure it was in place correctly, it still black screened me.

So i didnt think the hard drive was 100% crap, and i was able to reformat it, but now this, im hoping the new hard drive will fix all problems.

And now i obviously by reformatting it, cannot pull any of the valuble information off. I effed up i think, but as long as i can fix it i wont tell the family and still be a hero haha.

 

[Diesel 724]

Should i get the discs at $30 and try on this one? Or get the new hard drive and try to figure something out, or just bite the bullet and get both for a for sure fix?

 

[SchizTech]

I'd say $30 isn't too much for the proper recovery discs. What's the drive cost, about $50 or so? The combined price is still a lot better than most repair shops would charge.