Dell Inspiron 1545 Hard Drive

I had a laptop brought to me and I diagnosed it as a bad hard drive. The owner has bought two replacements, one from Amazon and one from Newegg. Both of these replacements slide in, but they do not connect to the ports at all. The original hard drive firmly slides and and you can feel it slide into place. The two replacements I have tried are both Toshiba brand.

Both the original hard drive and the new hard drives look identical, but the original seems to be thicker by a fraction of an inch.

The model # on the laptop is PP41L. I've tried the Dell website by typing in the service tag. They have every replacement part under the sun except for the hard drive for this model.

I worked on a similar laptop a few years ago and was able to buy the replacement directly from Dell. Same model as the one I am working on now.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

 

You need to pay attention to the drive thickness. Newer laptops use 9.5mm thick drives while older used 12.5mm thick drives. You need to check the thickness under the drive specifications when ordering a drive. I believe all current shipping models of 2.5 inch drives are 9.5mm but can't say that for sure. My guess is that the drives the owner bought were bargain drives that were being sold inexpensively because they were older drives.

The 9.5mm drives I've purchased actually came with a spacer so they could be used for laptop's requiring a 12.5mm. No clean way to adapt a 12.5mm drive for a laptop that is designed for a 9.5mm.

 

Thanks, I'm able to insert the drive without the caddy or cover screwed in and it connects just fine, but that's not the way we are going to keep it.

I've tracked down the one I ordered years ago and am going off of those specs for the new one.

 

I'm not sure why you would refer back to a drive your ordered years ago based on what I explained.

Virtually any currently manufactured 2.5" hdd or ssd will be 9.5mm in thickness and will work in that laptop. All you need to do is make sure of the thickness before you buy.

 

I look at the specs on the dell site and newegg, etc. None of them show thickness under the tech spechs. The closest they get is 2.5.

The laptop is from 2010/11.

This is the drive that does not fit properly. Yes, it will connect, but I have to keep the cover and caddy off and the drive will be free to wiggle around. Says nothing about thickness anywhere.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...on_1545_hard_drive-_-9SIA65W26J2235-_-Product

 

Here's a list of 53 drives that specify 9.5mm thickness on Newegg.com: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100007605%20600458204

 

Excellent, thank you! I should have known better and used that search function by size. Thank you for your patience with me on this.

I did some research on google by searching for "dell inspiron 1545 hard drive thickness" or something similar and came up with a result for a similar issue that I am having on the same model.

I have to assume that the drives that are not fitting are 7mm drives. I looked it up and this laptop does indeed require a 9.5mm.

Thank you again!