Laptop Hard Drive Upgrade

[glenn kangiser]

I have a failing D drive so got a 500 GB C drive from Apricorn and their EZ Gig II kit and software to Clone the C and then copy the D to it.

It was $139 for 500 GB and $39.95 for the kit and a pretty painless install.  I had one question and a can't read sector and their tech support on the phone answered within about 2 minutes or so.

I highly recommend them.  The drive included in their packaging was a Toshiba.  They have a program that will list compatible drives based on your computer model.  That is a great advantage and is why I used them.  I also used them years ago and was lucky enough to remember their name.

http://www.apricorn.com/

[fraggin]

I would reccomend utilizing a bart's boot disk. You can go to this site http://nu2.nu/bootdisk/ and download the free software to build one. All you need is your OS disk to create a boot disk that you can slipstream all the service packs into. With one of these, and a seperate disk that holds all your drivers, you can do a fresh install of windows quickly and easily. I always seperate my disks into two or more partitions for this purpose. One for the os and another for storage.

[BobHHowell]

Or try Linux.  Most Linux distros are live CDs now -- meaning you can boot a system without installing it.  I accidentally got involved in Linux a couple of years ago.  Our Windows XP kept getting the blue screen of death.  The message code said it was a known problem with no known fix.  Usually, I could just reboot.  One day -- it stopped for good.  I tried several live CDs -- but found PC Linux allowed me to access the hard drive and retrieve the data from Windows XP.  I eventually installed PC Linux. 

I have had fun reviving some old hardware with Linux.  I am typing this on an old laptop which has about 300 meg of RAM.  I am running Xbuntu -- which is a lighter weight version of Ubuntu.  The system had "system rot" from all of the Windows patches and service paks.  Runs like a champ with Linux.  I got a $10 network card off Yugster.  I was given the laptop by a family member -- I paid not quite $40 to get it shipped to me. 

For anyone too scared to try Linux -- it is very easy.  Ubuntu or Xbuntu are painless installs.  I have walked my 78 year old mother through an install over the phone.  Most of the major distributions come with Open Office -- or a similar "Office" suite already installed. 

Since Linux is free and kind of a DIY project -- I would think it would appeal to a lot of folks here.  Linux can run some Windows programs through emulation.  But this is very limited and hit or miss (not for Newbies).  But if you want to browse the internet, type, do spreadsheets, make presentations, play with photographs, listen to music ... Linux has free programs for all I described -- and more.  Glad to share more if someone has an interest.  I would bet good money there are more than a couple of Linux folks on this forum.

BHH

[glenn kangiser]

I manage to keep XP running but sometimes it takes a lot of fooling around and as I recall things worked better if you did not allow Microsoft to "FIX" everything.  I blocked auto updates and wuaclt is a major problem.  I couldn't even run my computer until I found the problem with it.  It crawled -slowly.