Laptop Upgrading

[ag703]

Hey all, I am both new to the board and currently in the process of upgrading my Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop and I had a few questions.

Firstly, I've already upgraded the DDR2 Memory to 1.37 GB. Can I go further? I'd like to have at least two 1 GB Ram Cards in the end.

I'm also looking at putting in a new hard drive, but I want to keep my old files. Is there some sort of mirroring program I can use?

I'd also like to put in a better combo CD/DVD Drive and Burner, where would I be able to find a compatible drive.

Finally, is there anything else I should be doing when upgrading my laptop? I'm pretty fond of the machine and I'd like to see it live for a few more years. Thanks in advance all!

 

[TheStu]

What speed and kind of processor do you have? You will probably want a dual core for Windows 7, much like how Vista prefers a dual core (at least in my experience), have you tried putting 2*1GB sticks into the system to see what happens?

As far as free drive cloning software goes for Windows.... I haven't found anything yet that is any good.

For the optical drive, most anything you can find on newegg should work. You probably need a 12.5mm drive, anything larger or smaller wouldn't fit.

 

[ag703]

I have a Turin 64 X2 @ 1.6ghz, and I have 1*1GB Stick and 1*512 MB stick in there as well...I just didn't know if the system could support more RAM. I've heard that Paragon has some decent software for hard drive mirroring, true?