Are laptop hard drives interchangable?

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

Hi PokerFreakk,

Most laptop hard disk made in the last 5 years have been to a standard. What you may find with some of the older drives is that
the height might not work. The three major sizes of the last 5 years is 9.5mm, 12.5mm and 17mm. Of course if your machine can
only take 9.5mm you can't use a taller drive. The only other thing that I would mention is that there is a number of interface
standards out there. So if you get a ATA5 and your computer only supports ATA3, then your access will be slowed to whatever the
laptops controller is.

Ciao . . .
C.Joseph

++ Let know man judge me until . . .
he has walked the road I have . . .
in the shoes I've worn. ++

http://kalek1.home.mindspring.com



PokerFreakk wrote:
> I was just woundering if any one knows if laptop hard drives are
> interchangable? like could I take hard drive out of an ibm and put it in a
> compaq?

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

The drives? or the operating systems on the drives?

Yes - as others have posted - the drives themselves would be able to be used
in another system.

That said - You wouldn't be able to take a hard drive functioning in an IBM
Thinkpad, place it in the Compaq and boot up with it. Each company would
have their own configuration of hardware devices, including motherboards, so
as soon as it started booting up in the other computer, you'd be prompted to
correct/install the new hardware found.

Even from one generation of manufacturer to another one (IBM Thinkpad 600
series to a T2# series would not work) Some devices may carry over, but
overall, you'd be getting into problems.

Hope this helps too.

"PokerFreakk" <pokerfreakk@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20040419221016.15096.00000031@mb-m10.aol.com...
> I was just woundering if any one knows if laptop hard drives are
> interchangable? like could I take hard drive out of an ibm and put it in a
> compaq?

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

> > Even from one generation of manufacturer to another one (IBM
> > Thinkpad 600 series to a T2# series would not work) Some devices
> > may carry over, but overall, you'd be getting into problems.

> I've done this from a 600X to a T23, and the result has been working
> fine for nearly 2 years now.

Similar results here. My current system started as Windows 2000 on a
ThinkPad 600, then moved to a 600E, then to an A20p and an A21p, then
upgraded to Windows XP, then moved to an A30p.

During all of those upgrades and migrations, the only place I ran into any
trouble at all was going to the A30p, where I hit the infamous IDE plug and
play problem that results in a Stop 0x0000007B blue screen during boot. A
Google search on the blue screen message led me to this Microsoft article
which fixed it:

http://support.microsoft.com/defau [...] -us;314082

All of the other upgrades were just a matter of cloning the hard drive so I
wasn't risking anything, booting the hard drive in the new machine, and
installing the new drivers from IBM's website.

Actually, I did one other step in the hardware migrations: Before moving the
copied drive to the new machine, I created a new hardware profile so I would
have profiles for both the old and new hardware. Now this XP installation
has hardware profiles for the 600, A21p, and A30p (I no longer have the
600E), and I can boot the drive in any of those three machines with all the
correct drivers ready to go.

-Mike