External Hard Drive question

[Julie]

I bought an external hard drive about 6 months ago, its one of those ones that u can plug into your tv and watch movies, listen to music etc. Was great for the kids until we had an unexpected visit from my niece who dropped it onto tiles from about 2 metres, consequently drive is now dead . The casing or what ever you call it- the thing the drive goes in and works with remote seems to be fine just the drive itself stuffed.

Well I want to know whether I can just buy another drive (it was 500g wd drive) or will that be useless without the software to play it on the tv? Basically if I buy a new drive will it work or do I have to buy another whole damn thing?

Thanks, Julie

[Tom_1569]

2 metres? is this niece some kind of giant?

Yes you SHOULD be able to replace the hard-drive, the software is not installed on the drive, but on the case, but im not 100% sure about this for the media cases. Replace with a WD drive to be safe, plus there cheaper and that will eliminate it only working with that brand. Also have a look on the manufacturers website and see if any software is available.

[Julie]

2 metres? is this niece some kind of giant?

lol no but I had the sense to put it up high to keep it up out of reach from my 2 yr old because I didn't want it stuffed. Unfortunately I got ambushed from SIL and her 5 ferals and she has a 4 yr old that likes to climb up and do whatever the hell she wants and mummy never watches them

[stocky]

yeah you should be able to swap the drive over fine. got any around the house you could test it with? even if it means taking it out of another computer to test?

[Julie]

Yeh I'll grab a spare one of my bro in law, he services atms and has a stash of them. Why didn't I think of that

[AirStrike]

Yeah mine stores the firmware on a basic ram setup similar to what holds the BIOS on computer motherboard.
Just check if it takes an IDE or SATA HDD as you can get both.