Is it possible to upgrade the hard drive of a laptop

Blisterman

I have a compaq presario laptop with a pathetically small 40gb hard drive. Is there any way I can upgrade this to a bigger harddrive, or add another hard drive, preferably internal?

kdouglas

its reasonably easy to do on alot of laptops, have a presario 2100 myself and changed the hard drive a couple of months ago. if its a similar model then youll find the hard drive bay by taking out the two rubber bungs and unscrewing two little screws on the underside of the laptop just directly below the touch pad, you can then pull out the hard drive caddy (which might be a bit difficult at first since its never been removed) and there's a further 4 screws holding the hard drive into the caddy. what model is your presario? you should be able to find a .pdf of the service manual somewhere with exploded views of the laptop and instructions for taking the drive out. if its a similar model to mind i have the service manual if you want me to email it to you.

Blisterman

Thanks for the quick response. It's an R3000, so I think it's different to yours. How big do laptop hard drives get?

MarkR

Top end ones go to about 100 gb now. Ever consider a USB drive?

Blisterman

Are they much slower than Internal hard drives?
It'll be mainly music and video on it.

spartacus93

Not much slower at all. I have a Maxtor 160Gig at the minute and it works great. I use it to backup all my files and it store all my music, and videos. Great little box, got it on Komplett. They don't do my one anymore but a 200 gig one, slightly newer model will set you back €200, a 100 gig internal laptop drive (2.5" Ide) will set ya bac €185. If I was you I'd get an External. Do you have USB2 / Firewire?

Dilbert75

I have a 250Gb drive in a external enclosure, both from Komplett. Works great on USB2.0 to my desktop. Bought with a view to use with laptop if/when its purchased.

Nukem

Get an external unless you really want a new internal drive.
Options
Get a big 3.5 external HDD (bigger can hold up to 250-300Gb for a reasonably priced one,downside is it needs an AC adapter)
Get a small 2.5 external HDD case and put you old HDD into that while replacing it with a bigger internal and now you have a bigger internal and a small external that runs off the USB.

Nukem

kdouglas

Nukem wrote:

Get an external unless you really want a new internal drive.
Options
Get a big 3.5 external HDD (bigger can hold up to 250-300Gb for a reasonably priced one,downside is it needs an AC adapter)
Get a small 2.5 external HDD case and put you old HDD into that while replacing it with a bigger internal and now you have a bigger internal and a small external that runs off the USB.

Nukem

yep, thats exactly what i did, 80gb in laptop, 20gb in usb enclosure, only usb 1.1 though so thats why i didnt go with a large external drive.

Blisterman

I think I'll go with a big external one. Do they all need a power cable?

Dilbert75

Yes, I'm pretty sure they do.

spartacus93

Blisterman wrote:

I think I'll go with a big external one. Do they all need a power cable?

All the big ones do. You might find some under 10 that dont.