upgrading hard drive in laptop

Sephiroth_dude · 12-04-2008 12:53pm #1

Was just wondering if its possible to upgrade hard drives in laptops,I've got dell xps m1710,and im running seriously low on memory :-/,I've got a external hard drive but somebody told me,if you install games on them,they wont work?any advice or suggestions would be great
thanks :pac:

Overheal · 12-04-2008 1:54pm

Games on externals - tried it once. only once. went kinda pear-shaped. Thats not to say it wouldnt work under the right circumstances.

Hard Drives are near-painless to upgrade in laptops. However unless you have 2 HDD slots (doubtful) you'll have to replace the one you already have which will = a re-install of the OS.

Sephiroth_dude · 12-04-2008 1:56pm

Overheal wrote: »

Games on externals - tried it once. only once. went kinda pear-shaped. .

How did it go pearshaped?

Tom Dunne · 12-04-2008 2:07pm

I used to run games running from an external drive all the time off my old P4 laptop. It is that bit slower, but certainly usable, I managed to finish HL2 from an external HD.

Overheal · 12-04-2008 2:10pm

I cant remember, it just didnt work. Tried Dawn of War with it.

out of interest how big is your hard drive currently

Sephiroth_dude · 12-04-2008 2:23pm

14.40 i think :-/.

Tom Dunne · 12-04-2008 2:31pm

Oh, and to answer your question - swapping a hard-drive on a laptop is generally very easy.

Just checking my Dell Precision M65 here - there's a panel underneath for direct access to the hard-drive, I'd imagine most Dell's are like that.

Sephiroth_dude · 12-04-2008 2:54pm

How much would a new harddrive cost from dell ?

Tom Dunne · 12-04-2008 3:08pm

Sephiroth_dude wrote: »

How much would a new harddrive cost from dell ?

Crazy idea - have you checked www.dell.ie?

Don't buy it there, though, you will pay over the odds. Check out some of the sites in the stickies.

AlmightyCushion · 12-04-2008 3:18pm

http://www.dabs.ie/productlist.aspx?&NavigationKey=11154&NavigationKey=47250000&CategorySelectedId=11154&PageMode=1&PageOffset=0&RecordOffset=0#Paging

List of 2.5" sata drives on dabs.ie. 320GB hard drive is only €120ish now. Just to let you know I think the m1710 can take 2 drives.

Sephiroth_dude · 12-04-2008 3:59pm

woah,that wuld be cool if it could take two drives,I'll check the manual when I get home :pac: that would mean then I would'nt need to unistall windows ya?

AlmightyCushion · 12-04-2008 4:10pm

After a bit of searching it appears you can only have the second hard drive id you take out the dvd drive and place a hd caddy in there. You'd have to buy the hd caddy your self and it will mean there will be no internal dvd drive. Not ideal.

Overheal · 12-04-2008 9:17pm

Depends on your disk use. Personally I rarely ever find myself accessing disks and when I do its at my desk. One solution is to get a hard drive caddy and put your DVD drive into an enclosure.

But if you have an external already I would rather suggest a re-install of windows, and moving your HDD to a new external enclosure (which should cost cheap) and move any of your wanted files of it after the new hard drive is in place. Your old HDD can double as quite portable storage this way, a la a WD Passport drive.

upgrading hard drive in laptop

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