new HDD for Amilo A1630 laptop...

[byrde147]

I would like a new HDD for my laptop as the existing one is only 4200rpm and seems to take ages to boot up. I think the boot up takes so long because the cpu throttles (mobile athlon 64) and the hdd is slow.

Can I just choose any 2.5" disk and get going or is it a bit more complicated? I just want a faster drive, ie. a 7200rpm.

Thanks.

 

[rpstewart]

It's pretty likely that any 2.5" disk will fit although there are a couple of things to keep an eye out for:

1) How tall the existing drive is, most new disks are 9mm although there may be the odd 12mm still about. Obviously a 12mm disk won't fit if the laptop is only designed for 9mm ones.

2) I'd keep to 120Gb as a maximum in case the laptop BIOS can't cope with >132Gb

First step will be to find where the current drive is and take it out to check it is a standard drive and how big it is. You then need to think how you're going to get Windows onto the new drive and the data off the old one, it might be worth investing in an external caddy and a copy of Ghost or TrueImage and just imaging the existing disk onto the new one.

 

[byrde147]

Thanks for that.....

I intend to install a fresh copy of Vista onto the new drive, therefore keeping the old drive in it's original state. I am assuming then that if something goes wrong with the Vista install, or it doesn't run correctly, I could revert back to my old HDD and boot up as before with Win XP?

I have all my documents etc. backed up onto an external HDD, so transferring the data across to the new drive should be straightforward enough.

 

[rpstewart]

Sounds like a sensible plan, should work fine.