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Right, so one of my laptops has broken down. Windows just does not boot up. By the looks of things it is the drive. DOS Drive diagnostic tools reboot the machine after a period of time. Nice.

Anyways I used the Ubuntu CD to totally use the DVD drive for the OS (nice feature before full install) to get all important files onto a portable USB drive. Apart from a few things refusing to copy (again totally points to stuffed drive) then I got most of what I wanted.

After that I thought I would install Ubuntu (7.04) to see quickly if the hard drive could handle it. And it could. Installed fine and seemed to work great.

Unfortunatly I'm not the main user of the machine and the person who is hates Linux (had to use it in Uni for CS degree, which I think made her despise it. They did pretty much suck in the 90's compared to a nice Sun system ).

So I went and tried installing Windows (guessed at which disk was the correct one : I have loads of PCs), which seemed to install fine, but the key (from the bottom of the laptop) is being refused. Ach!

As a final thing I found the restore disks for the laptop (yay!). But this reboots the PC (like the drive diagnostic tools) after about 10% in. Doesn't carry on with the restore or anything, just dies. Typical.

After unplugging the HD (Seagate BTW) I noticed it was Ultra ATA. Now I notice that pretty much any hardware store online says either IDE or SATA. After browsing around I've found most sites reckon SATA is not compatible with Ultra ATA hardware. Great. Then again if this is like back in the day (when I was more into taking things to bits) then this is not always the truth. So anyone have a decent knowledge of SATA and Ultra ATA? Considering Ultra ATA drives seem to not exist online (obviously I am talking 2.5" laptop ones).

Any help is appreciated. Don't really fancy buying a new laptop which is mainly used for web/itunes/email. Either that or force her into using Linux again and hoping the drive doesn't break down fully too soon.

Cheers

Just tell her to put up with Ubuntu.
Infact, I'm pretty sure there's a version of Ubuntu out there somewhere (or rather, GNOME) that mimics XP's interface almost exactly.

Open source software is better for your soul

Otherwise, why buy a whole new laptop? I'm sure that a couple days scrounging around on the net will yeild a new drive, or at the very least, some information telling you definitively if UATA and SATA are compatible