Upgrading laptop hard drive?

[TUS 373]

My wife has complained that my laptop computer "seems" to be getting slower. I think its a case of over familiarity with the machine, impatience, and being spoilt form using fast desktop PCs.

One plan is to double up the memory from 512 Mb to 1 Gb. Another would be to put in a faster hard drive. I believe the one I have is a 30 Gb 4200 rpm, but I could feasibly upgrade to a 5400 rpm.

Questions - are there any compatibility issues to worry about or should this be a straight swap of one piece of hardware for another. Secondly, I am quite used to upgrading and cloning hard disks in desk top PCs because you can easily connect more than one at a time to the motherboard. Just wondering what the best way is to do this with a laptop though (e.g. is it possible to connect the old drive and new drive to a desk PC to clone, or just connect the new HDD temporarily to the laptop somehow?).

[406tm]

Search the web for a copy of Ghost and make an image of your laptop HDD. That way, if you change the laptop HDD you can clone it back to the original hard drive format / layout

HTH

Dave

406TM

[TUS 373]

Hi,
Yes, I have Ghost already. I was wondering more as to the physical connection of the drives to swap data from one to t'other.

Also, are laptop hard drives freely interchangeable i.e. form factor, voltage etc, even if running at different rotational speeds?

[victormeldrew]

I have upgraded with larger HDD's of a type already fitted by the notebook manufacturer, but a lot depends on the notebook.

Moving from 4200 to 5400 you might find an increase in noise levels, which is more noticeable in a notebook.

[agent006]

TUS 373 said:

Also, are laptop hard drives freely interchangeable i.e. form factor, voltage etc, even if running at different rotational speeds?

Yes.

[406tm]

TUS 373 said:

Hi, Yes, I have Ghost already. I was wondering more as to the physical connection of the drives to swap data from one to t'other. Also, are laptop hard drives freely interchangeable i.e. form factor, voltage etc, even if running at different rotational speeds?

You need to be careful because they come in 2 thickness's - 8 and 12 mm I think - that should be the only difference. You can also get a 2.5 to 3.5 hdd adapter from ebay. This will allow you to connect your laptop drive to an IDE cable on your desktop

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/2-5-Laptop-Notebook-HD-to-3-5-

HTH

Dave

406TM

[TUS 373]

Ah. thanks for that link to the Ebay device - excellent. It looks like I now know the means, just need to identify a compatible HDD.

Thanks all.