Upgrading a Laptop Hard Disk - Page 2

To find out what sort of disk you have, I find by far the most reliable way is to actually look at what's in your laptop - this leaves no room for error. To do this, simply power down your laptop fully (not into any sort of standby mode), turn it over, and locate the hard disk access panel. Some will be labelled, but most are easily recognisable from their size (a rectangle around 11-12cm by 7-8cm). Some slot into the side of the laptop, so their access panel is smaller and along the edge. If in doubt, just unscrew the one that looks the right sort of size - if it's wrong, just screw it back down and try again!

The location of the disk in the Acer Aspire 5630 we'll be upgrading today.

Once you find the correct location of the hard disk, carefully unclip or unscrew the drive to free it (if there are extra screws which hold the disk down, be sure to set these aside from the screws used to hold the cover on, as they might be a different size!). Now slide the disk out:

In this laptop the disk is screwed into a cage. The cage slides out by pulling a tab on the back.

This hard disk uses the IDE interface.

The drive will likely be in a small cage, but don't worry about this for now, just look at the end that connects to the laptop. It should be quite easy to see which sort of disk you have, and once you know, just pop the disk back into the laptop for now, and carefully screw it back in.

*note* some manufacturers affix additional connectors to their hard disks to allow safer plugging in/out. These however can make the disk look non-standard at first glance, however they are easily removed, exposing the true data connector. For example:

On this hard disk, removed from an Acer TravelMate 530, it looks like the normal IDE pins have been replaced with special 'prongs'.

However, carefully lifting the interface away from the disk reveals that this is in fact simply an adapter on top of the normal pins.

With the adapter removed, you can see that this disk is just an ordinary IDE model.

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Article Navigation:

• Introduction
• Preparation
• Getting The Right Disk For The Job
• Shopping!
• Clone Wars
• A Disky Exchange
• Activation
• Waste Not, Want Not
• Until Next Time