How to Replace Internal Hard Drive of Dell Inspiron 1545 Laptop

If you are running out of space on your hard drive or if the hard drive has failed or is in the process of failing or your laptop showing the alert that you need to replace your hard drive.

Signs of the hard drive failure may be a very very slow computer with continuous disk access, i.e. the hard drive light is on continuously while the computer seems to be frozen. Here I have shown the process that how to replace a Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop hard drive?

Here I have replaced the hard drive (500GB) of my Dell Inspiron 1545 Laptop (purchased in 2010) because it becomes very very slow and shows the alert message that hard drive may fail please replace it with a new one. I replaced the old one with a newly purchased hard drive of 500GB.

Removing the Hard Drive from a Dell Inspiron 1545 laptop:

• Shut down the laptop and close the laptop and turn it over. First, remove the battery and after that remove the two hard drive retaining screws using a screwdriver.

• Remove the hard drive with the tray from the Dell Inspiron 1545 Laptop by pulling it outwards.

• Remove the two screws, one screw on each side of the hard drive tray, using a screwdriver and then remove the hard drive from the tray. Take note of the position of the hard drive within the tray, to guide you when refitting.

Installing the Hard Drive into a Dell Inspiron 1545 Laptop:

• Insert the hard drive into the hard drive tray and refit the two screws using a screwdriver. Some drives, especially SSDs will also have a spacer supplied since they are thinner, make sure that the spacer is fitted if required. New HHDs are also thinner, if the spacer is not supplied with the HDD then you can use the cardboard to fill the space.

• Slide the tray with the hard drive into the Dell Inspiron 1545 Laptop. You should feel some resistance at the end, if you do not feel any resistance you may have forgotten the spacer or fitted the hard drive to the tray incorrectly.

• The two screw holes should align with the hard drive screw holes.

• Refit the two retaining screws using a screwdriver. The hard drive is now installed. You may need to format the hard drive and install an operating system, or you may need to restore a clone of your old hard drive if you have not already done so.

Problems faced during the installation of the new hard drive:

I installed the new hard drive but it was not detected by the system. My new hard drive was thinner than the old one and when I inserted the hard drive with tray into the laptop, the laptop’s upside was down. I pulled the hard drive with the tray and inserted it again and this time laptop was in normal position i.e. upside was up after that when I started the laptop, the hard drive was detected.

You may also use cardboard of the size of the hard drive to fill the space if the new hard drive is thinner than the older one.