My home laptop hard drive just died on me last night (Inspiron 300M). I have had this laptop for 3-4 years now.

I called Dell and used an express service # for my old job that apparently works still and they are shipping me a HD in a few days. The problem is, is that it is a Dell Latitude Express service #, so will that matter if they send me a hard drive for the latitude model and I need it for the Inspiron or are they interchangeable parts? Sorry, I am a noob when it comes to computer repair.

I have a friend who works for an IT department a block away from me, and he said he would do the data recovery and replace my hard drive, if he has one.

Anyone know if I called Dell, and they send me a Latitude Hard Drive and my laptop is an Inspiron, if that will make difference, or is a Dell HD a Dell HD?

From my experience, the harddrives will work between different types of dell laptops just fine, however there is a hard drive casing that is specific to the model that you will have to deal with. You will have to take the casing for the latitude hard drive off and put on the casing from your Inspiron hard drive.

I do not know however if they will have any issues with you sending back a hard drive from a completely different Inspiron. I don't know how detailed they inventory that type of stuff. Just noting that I have taken hard drives from various dell laptops and used them in other dell laptops before by doing that.

Thanks AlanT!

I actually have my work laptop from my old job (hard drive crashed too a few months back) which is the Latitude. I had dell send me a hard drive but they configured it to my old jobs image, meaning I needed to take it in to my old job IT department for them to complete the set up so I can log in.

Right now that laptop is gathering dust, because once I turn on the computer it asks for a LAN password which i don't have. I am hoping my friend can put a new HD into the Inspiron, Dell sends me a "blank" HD, and I use that HD to install into my gathering dust laptop, send them back the imaged one from my company, and then reinstall all of the software that I have and BAAAAM, 2 new laptops!

and then reinstall all of the software that I have and BAAAAM, 2 new laptops!

You are the jbmagic of laptops.

You are the jbmagic of laptops.

Yo mamma