You find yourself again questioning where to put your latest classes or seminars? Running out of hard disk space? No more storage space for the latest MP3 album of Prahlad Prabhu?

Now it is the time to upgrade!!!

Depending on your laptop brand & type you can (easily) replace the internal hard disk. Mind you that this is not a quick nor easy process. Putting in a new hard disk means you will have to reinstall Windows/OS X/Linux and all your programs. Upgrades are a pain.

So i suggest to find yourself a computer expert to do this. If you are willing to experiment then i will try to point you in the right directions for further guidelines.

I recently replaced the hard disk of a MacBook Pro (2007 model) with a new 320 GB hard disk. So i got some experience with Apple computers.

Hard disk ? GB ? what are you talking about?

If you ever saw this message :

You are running out of space on drive C: …. Click here to delete temporary files

then you would need to think about a bigger hard disk (which every computer has). It is on this hard disk that your Windows and other programs are stored. So it is possible to exchange this hard disk for a bigger model.

For example, if you have a IBM (Lenovo) laptop, type T43 then the storage size of your internal hard disk could be 60, or 80 GB. (Depending on your choice of model). Hard disk sizes are given in GB, or Gigabytes. The more the better i would say. At the moment a size of 320GB is available, and in a month or so we will be seeing 500 GB models…

So what hard disk should i buy and where to buy it ?

Laptop hard disk have a standard physical size. They are categorized as 2.5″. The height of the hard disk should be 9.5 mm otherwise it will not always fit in your laptop. (unless you have a huge laptop)
The hard disk inside newer latop models is a SATA harddisk. SATA is the name of the special plug that connects the hard disk to your laptop. Older laptop models (before 2005) have a different plug called IDE. So find out in the manual what hard disk type you have.

Speed ?
Then you can choose the speed. There are three options at the moment : 4200, 5400 and 7200 rpm. If you are a heavy user then you should buy a 7200 speed model. If not then 5200 is a good choice. I would not buy 4200 anymore.

Storage size?
After this you have to choose the size of the storage. You want 120, 160, 200, 250, 320 or 500 GB??? It is up to you.

Brand?
Last but not least, what brand ? It does not really matter anymore because all drives are generally of good quality. I would suggest to stick with the brand of the old model. But if you need some brand names : Samsung Spinpoint, Western Digital Scorpio, Fujitsu, Hitachi travelstar.
 
Abacadabra
So when we put it all together on one line you would need this :
500GB, 2.5″, sata (3.0), 7200 rpm hard disk. 9.5 mm.
There you have it… hocus pocus

Some online links :

• 320 GB Laptop drives at Newegg.com
• Article about the new 500GB hard disks
• More hard disks at Tigerdirect.com

OK, Show me the Way to do it!

Here are some quick guidelines and suggestion for a few brands of computers. By no means is this complete. Please consult some friends with computer knowlegde if in doubt.

* MacBook Pro (2007 model, Core Duo 2, 15 inch screen)

The Mac was out of warranty and getting service in the local Apple shop would have cost me € 50-80 so i decided to do it myself. There are some detailed guidelines available on the net so it was quite easy. After the upgrade i reinstalled Max OS X (Leopard) again and all my programs. It is running like a baby without problems.

Warning ! There were some problems with the 120GB Scorpio model and a Mac. But the 320 GB model seems not to have these problems as it is sold online for the Mac. Since Apple generally uses Seagate hard disks, it might be good to stick with this brand.

• Guide for exchanging your mac drive
• Another excellent guide for upgrading your drive
• Software to clone your hard disk

* Lenovo or IBM (T43 or T61 models)

I upgraded the harddisk recently for Kadamba Kanana Swami’s new laptop to a faster model. The old model had a speed of 5400 rpm. I put in a faster model of 7200 rpm. This will definitively improve the overal speed of your programs. Exchanging the harddisk is very easy on the T61 model. The hard disk is user replaceable and behind a little piece of plastic. You just unscrew and take of the plastic door, pull out the hard disk and put in the new one. Right? Well almost…

Lenovo installs your Windows software on a special place on the hard disk in the factory. So when you buy it is ready to go. And with the big blue button you can easily get access to this special software where you can reinstall your computer. Sounds good he? But when you exchange the hard disk you will loose the special software and the blue button will not work fully anymore. There are always two sides to a coin i guess.

There is a solution to this and that is to copy (or clone) all the data that was on the old hard disk to your new drive. But this is not an easy process.

• Lenovo T61 hardware Guide (pdf)
• Software to Copy (clone) your harddisk (did not try this myself)

* Other Laptops 

I did not try other laptops at the moment, so i dont want to give suggestion when i dont have experience. But in general it should not be too difficult. But you can always find a computer friend somewhere?