How to Replace Your Laptop Hard Drive With a Larger Hard Drive
If you have an older laptop with a 10-30 gigabyte (GB) hard drive, you're probably thinking of getting rid of it because you're running out of space. You may be able to breathe new life into it by adding a larger hard drive, possibly a much larger one. My husband added a 250 GB drive to our old 20 GB Toshiba laptop. You also might be able to do so using these steps.
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Things You'll Need
- Laptop running Windows XP
- Small phillips head screw driver
- Plastic baggies
- Post-its
- Pen or pencil
Instructions
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Carefully research what kind of hard drive your computer has before you open it up or buy anything.
You need to determine whether you have an ATA/IDE or a SATA drive. If you have a newer SATA drive, installation is very easy. Older laptops probably will have ATA 4,5,6, 100, or 133 2.5 inch hard drives with mini-IDE connectors (44-pin).
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Carefully open up your laptop. If possible, see if there is a video or instructions with photos on the internet on how to do this. Use plastic baggies and post-its to separate and record where you took the screws from. You will be removing a lot of screws and they may be of many different sizes.
Many laptops have a plastic cover over the hinge that may need to be popped out after you remove the screws holding it in. This has to be done gently. Note that screws holding this cover in place may be located on the rear side of the display near the hinge.
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Disassemble your laptop until you have access to the existing hard drive.
Examine the existing hard drive and its cradle. Because you may be replacing an old ATA/IDE drive with a newer, large capacity SATA drive, determine whether there is room to add a 70 by 14 by 15.5 mm adapter between a new SATA hard drive and the motherboard. To find room to install everything, you may need to remove the cradle and jury rig another way to mount the new hard drive plus the adapter.Alternately, there is a small chance you may be able to install and mount a new SATA drive in a vacant area inside the laptop, such as a space reserved for an uninstalled floppy disk drive. If this is possible, you could hook up the adapter circuit to the motherboard and connect it to the new hard drive using a male to female SATA cable.
If you don't want to go to the trouble of trying to replace an ATA/IDE drive with a SATA drive or if such an installation is impossible because of insufficient space, you can buy 60-80 GB ATA/IDE hard drives that will work for ATA 4,5,6 100 or 133 systems. Try to buy a new drive, not a "pull" that was yanked out of another computer. Realize that these drives are pushing the envelope of an older technology.
If you are replacing a SATA drive with a SATA drive, you will simply need to carefully remove the old drive and insert the new SATA drive.
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After you made your decision on what type of new hard drive to install, its time to buy your equipment. If you are replacing an ATA/IDE drive with a SATA drive, you need to buy a 2.5 inch laptop SATA drive. They go up to about 500 GB. If you are not cloning your existing hard drive and are reinstalling Windows XP, you will initially have difficulty getting your laptop to recognize more than 137 GB until you install SP2. See the Microsoft website for further information.
You also will need a SATA to mini-IDE adapter. They are hard to find but you can buy one here: http://www.cooldrives.com/2sahadrtoide.html (See link at bottom or page) If you decide to mount your new SATA hard drive in a new location inside the laptop, you will need a male to female SATA cable. You can buy one at this website: http://www.cpustuff.com/22-pin-male-to-22-pin-female-power-and-data-sata-adapter-custom-cable.-p-342.html (See link at the bottom of this page) Buy a cable about 8" long.
If you are adding a new ATA 4,5,6, 100, or 133 hard drive, buy the appropriate drive. Make sure you match ATA specifications. Some faster ATA drives might work in your computer -- check the drive manufacturer's specifications.
If you are swapping SATA drives, simply buy the drive you want.
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Swapping data. Before you uninstall your old drive and install the new one, decide how you will transfer data from the old drive. There are several routes you can pursue to do this. Before you remove anything, delete files you don't need. You should defrag the old drive if you plan to clone it.
Cloning the drive. One option is to clone the new drive using a clone drive kit. This will save you the trouble of reinstalling the operating system. You can buy one on Amazon.com. See link at the bottom of this page.
Transferring files. Another option is to transfer your data files to another computer if they are linked over a router or burn the files onto a CD or DVD if your laptop has a CD or DVD burner. Next, you could reinstall your operating system using the installation disks that came with your lap top. If you lost them, you may be able to get new ones from the manufacturer. Alternately, you also could install a new version of Windows XP. Note that installing Vista or Windows 7 on an older machine is not advisable.
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After you have installed everything and are sure everything works, carefully put your computer back together. Make sure components are mounted securely and you put all the screws back in the right places.
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Tips & Warnings
It is possible to add a larger hard drive to a laptop running Windows 98 SE up to 137 GB. Windows 95 has a limit of 64 GB.
If your SATA to mini-IDE adapter does not work, try adjusting the jumper setting.
It is very possible that there is no physical way to install a large SATA drive into a ATA/IDE laptop because of lack of space. Many experts on the internet advise against doing this. Examine the inside of your laptop carefully before you buy equipment that may not fit.
