Laptop Hard Drives Guide
Hard drives mounted in laptops are standardized in size and interface, just like in desktop computers.
That means they are almost fully interchangeable. In fact, hard drives together with RAM memories are
the easiest, if not the only possible parts to upgrade in your notebook.
Generally, the amount of refurbished laptops offers available online is enough to choose a computer configuration that fits all your needs, including hard drive capacity. All depends on what are your hardware needs. You may want to find cheap 700MHz laptop, but may need for some reason 80GB hard drive within. And because when 700MHz CPUs were mounted in laptop computers, there were not 80GB hard drives available, you hardly find offer that combines those two features.
Happily, there are a lot of new and used laptop hard drives offers online, and upgrading it is so easy that anyone equipped with screwdriver and minimal technical skills could do it on their own.
Everything You Need To Know About Laptop Hard Drives
Size
You need to know only few things to successfully choose, buy and upgrade your laptop hard drive. First, hard drives in notebooks are smaller than in desktop PCs and comes in 1.8" and 2.5" sizes. 2.5" models are the most common and that's what you probably need for your refurbished laptop, since 1.8" drives are used only in the newest super small notebook models.
Thickness
2.5" drives come in two thickness versions: older 12.5 mm and newer 9.5 mm. It doesn't really matter what thickness hard drive your laptop has, as you probably wouldn't upgrade it to older model and in every case you can replace 12.5 mm with 9.5 mm one.
BIOS Limitations On Hard Drives Capacity
When replacing your refurbished laptop's drive with bigger version, you could meet annoying BIOS limitations that would make your computer see only a part of your hard drive. You could meet such limitations on 7.9GB or 8.4GB level in computers produced before 1998. As modern operating systems like Windows or Linux use BIOS functions to access hard drives only at boot time, sometimes you can work with bigger drives despite the fact that BIOS cannot detect its capacity properly. However, BIOS can hang up your computer when not able to detect disk properly. To make your data safe, you should try to overcome such limitation by using 3rd party disk managers or upgrading BIOS to newer version. You can read more about these topics here:
- Operating System And BIOS Limitations
- BIOS Limitations - Seagate Support Article
- Hard Disk Upgrade: The BIOS IDE Hard Disk Limitations
Generally, BIOSes released before 1998 may not support drives larger than 8.4GB and BIOSes released before June 1999 may suffer from 32GB limitation.
The simplest method to see if your laptop would work with hard drive you would like to install is to look for the same laptop model with similar disk capacity, for example on eBay. If you find your laptop model with disk bigger than 8.4GB, that means you can use it with any disk up to 32GB. If you find your laptop model with more than 32GB disk, the next limitation you could meet is at 134GB, what probably wouldn't be a problem in your case. Note that it still might demand using disk manager software or upgrading BIOS.
ATA-66, ATA-100, EIDE - What Is This?
All laptop hard drives have the same physical connector and logical EIDE interface. When looking at hard drives offers you will see the ATA-66, ATA-100 and other ATA-x notations. These are just different speed versions of the same EIDE interface. ATA-66 means that the maximal disk interface bandwidth is 66MB/s. As every fast ATA disk can work with the slower version of your laptop's interface, you don't really have to care about it. In fact, you don't even need to know what version of ATA does you laptop support, unless you plan to spend extra money on fast hard drive. In that case, pay attention not to overpay for a fast disk that you will not be able to take full advantage of because of your laptop EIDE interface limitations.
Hard Drives Speeds
A speed of hard drive depends mainly on disk platters rotation speed. The most common values you can meet today are 4200rpm, 5400rpm, 7200rpm or 10000rpm, where rpm stands for rotations per minute. The faster rotation, the shorter access time and higher real disk bandwidth. Note that disk bandwidth is not the same as disk interface bandwidth. 20MB/s bandwidth disk with 100MB/s interface will still work at 20MB/s speed. The most common value today is 5400rpm. Faster disks are significantly more expensive. Although disk speed wouldn't be essential for everyone, everyone would be able to notice shorter system and applications boot up time when using higher rpm disk. Generally, computers with faster drives are apparently faster and work smoother.
How To Install Your New Hard Drive
To install your new hard disk you have to find where is your current one. Don't forget to unplug the AC adapter and to remove the battery before you start. There is a plenty of manufacturers' solutions but you should never need anything besides screwdriver and a bit of patience.
Most laptop models features easy access to upgradeable hardware like hard drives or memory and you can find them on the bottom side, under cover usually attached by only one screw.
Sometimes you can find special hard disk bay on either side of your computer. After releasing locks and unscrewing screws you should be able to pull your hard drive out.
If you cannot find hard drive at any of those places try to look under the keyboard.
When you find your hard drive, it would usually be assembled to some rack. Just demount your current drive from it and mount your new one the same way. It should be automatically detected after you turn the power on and after installing new operating system you can enjoy your refurbished laptop with bigger hard disk.
Places Where You Can Find Good Offers On Hard Drives
To find quality places, where you can buy hard drives for your laptop, check this DMOZ category: Computers: Hardware: Storage: Hard Drives
You can also look at eBay to find plenty of offers.
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