The Easy Way to Replace a Dying Notebook Hard Drive

Status
Not open for further replies.

bgerber

Distinguished
Feb 10, 2006
194
0
18,680
Very little is as daunting as replacing a hard disk drive that is dying. Calvin Chu takes a relaxed look at these issues and shows you how easy it can be to make your notebook sing again.
 

kshipper

Distinguished
Aug 27, 2004
85
0
18,630
Very informative. The only part I think that needs clarity is the 2.5 to 3.5 drive converter installtion. I am under the impresssion that you can ruin a hard drive quickly if that is put on backwards?
 

shadowflit

Distinguished
Sep 20, 2006
19
0
18,510
It seems it would be easier to just use an external hard disk (that you're backing your laptop up on anyway, or borrow one if you're not) and something like Acronis, or anything else that makes image backups. Backup -> switch drives -> restore -> done.
 

Jake_Barnes

Splendid
It seems it would be easier to just use an external hard disk (that you're backing your laptop up on anyway, or borrow one if you're not) and something like Acronis, or anything else that makes image backups. Backup -> switch drives -> restore -> done.

Makes sense to me. I use Acronis with my desktop, and can't see why it wouldn't be just as effective with a notebook.
 
G

Guest

Guest
This is the reason I've been using ThinkPad T latptops for years - the removable drive slot (UltraBay). I have the accessory that allows a second hard drive to be installed in the bay, so upgrading is a simple matter of inserting the drive, running a clone operation, and then installing the cloned drive in the new bay. No fooling with external hardware, no fooling with the XP migration utility, no negative affect on the original drive.

I've done this about 7 times in the last five years, making the investment in the hard drive tray for the UlraBay very worthwhile.

One caveat: I'm not impressed with the current crop of clone tools. I carefully preserve an older copy of Norton Ghost, which works beautifully because Windows is not running when the cloning takes place.

I've yet to have a laptop hard drive fail, possibly because I only used IBM or Hitachi drives. My upgrades were for capacity or performance. I thus use my UltraBay HDD adapter and older drives for backups, which is very convenient and very fast.
 

icthy

Distinguished
Jul 12, 2006
14
0
18,510
When you buy a new hard drive for a laptop (say a Serial ATA-150 drive) how do you know if it is compabable with your motherboard? Seems like (at least to my novice eyes) that this could be an important issue given it's often hard to find out about the motherboard in one's laptop.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.