Chris L

I want to put a new hard drive in my laptop - having never done this before, I thought I would just ask a few basic questions before I go plunging in with my screwdriver

Current laptop is a fairly new HP/Compaq NC6000. It is running a 1Ghz processor, 512Mb RAM and Windows 2000. The hard drive is a Toshiba MK3021GAS - 30Gb Ultra ATA100 2.5" drive - pretty standard as far as I can make out.

I was looking at something like this Fujitsu one.

Is it just a case of swapping one for the other, formatting the drive and loading in the new OS?

Chris

IanW

In theory Chris yep, just make sure your have the latest BIOS on the laptop etc...

I actually now tend to GHOST my HDD when i do stuff like this now, means i dont have the hassle of re-installing everything and getting it all setup 'my way' again.

suba

if you want to increase your laptop HDD capacity, you might want to consider a USB HDD enclosure? mostly all 2.5inch HDD will be powered by the USB port so it is very portable.

stevencotton

I wouldn't do that with Windows, any cruft left in the registry or on the disk will still be there on your "new" install.

jowl

If your system is pretty much problem free, I'd do it every time. Ghost is a huge timesaver for me.

Obviously if your machine is prone to crashes, a fresh install might be better.....but a lot longer

Chris L

Thanks guys. I wanted to load up a clean build (XP Pro) rather than ghost over an exact copy of the existing OS. I'm not too bothered about increasing capacity. I've got big hard drives on my PC, so storage isn't a problem.

Chris