How easy/hard is it to replace laptop hard drive?

[JASANITY]

Anyone done this/planning on doing this? Any pointers? Was it easy or difficult? I've changed HD's in a desktop, but am thinking of switching out my laptop HD for a bigger one.

Thanks.

 

[modedepe]

Originally posted by: JASANITY
Anyone done this/planning on doing this? Any pointers? Was it easy or difficult? I've changed HD's in a desktop, but am thinking of switching out my laptop HD for a bigger one.

Thanks.

Depends on the laptop, but the ones I've seen are easy. My Thinkpad has one screw you remove and the caddy thing the hd is attached to slides out.

 

[vegetation]

Not hard at all. But make sure you have some kind of usb/firewire 2.5" adapter drive so you can mirror your stuff over seamlessly.

 

[JASANITY]

Is it harder or easier to change than in a desktop?

 

[GarrettZx]

It's a little different, but not much harder.

You'll just have to pop off the casing around your keyboard.

Then unscrew the keyboard and unplug it's connector to remove it.

This should be all you need to do to reveal the HD and then examine it to see how it's held in there.

 

[Godsend1]

On my Dell 6000 it's 2 screws, then the sled slides out. You have to swap the drives on the sled, then slide it back in. Simple.

 

[corkyg]

Originally posted by: JASANITY
Is it harder or easier to change than in a desktop?

Much easier. You don't have cables or connectors to deal with. And, you work sitting down at a nice table.

Here's my sequence.

1. Put the new drive in an external USB or Firewire case and connect it to the laptop.

2. Boot using an Acronis TrueImage CDR, and clone the old drive to the new drive.

3. Remove the new drive from the external case.

4. Turn the laptop over so the bottom is up. Open the HDD bay. On mine, I then remove two screws to remove the drive caddy.

5. The drive is held in the caddy by 4 screws. Remove it. Put in the new drive.

6. Replace the caddy in the laptop.

7, Close the HDD access door and turn the laptop over.

8. Open it and boot up just like you were but with a bigger drive.

Piece of cake!

 

[orion23]

depends on the laptop.
My dell was very easy to work with. Just one screw, then remove the caddy (adaptor)
That was all!

 

[DBSX]

Pretty easy, depending on the laptop. Don't let the keyboard unscrewing scare you, for most I have seen that won't be needed. Usually it's one screw on the bottom to remove the drive, then 4 screws to remove the drive from the caddy/mount, then reverse the process to install. It was so easy that when my fiance's laptop took a crap on a business trip in China, she was able to do it in minutes after a quick call to me to explain what needed to be done. She is NOT a hardware type, but she was still able to do it with minimal instruction.

\Dan

 

[cubalis]

lol

I just finished replacing the hd in a friends old school blueberry ibook G3 (3.2gb) tonight.
It was the most time consuming hd swap I have ever encountered - everything in the notebook had to be removed, including screen. Not only that, but it used torx screws....

2 hrs later I finished


My toshiba m200 tablet on the other hand - less then 3 minutes start to finish.

It really depends on the notebook, as others have said.