HP Laptop HDD question

[Sykemuir]

Hi!

I have an HP/Compaq NX 6110 laptop which is adequate for my purposes, except that the hard disk, at 40gb is too small. I'm wondering what I can do as far as upgrading this. What HDD would I need and are there any limitations on size? I had considered an external HDD but fely this would be a bit clumsy. Any suggestions?

Regards

Pat Macguire (UK)

[JoeP517]

You should check the HP support site for your PC to see what is supported. There could be BIOS limits or updates that may affect what size HD you could use.

Joe

[satrow]

HP suppled it with drives from 30GB to 100GB, I'm pretty sure a 120GB should also work but higher capacity drives may not.

120GB from DABS. Choose a PATA/EIDE drive, SATA versions will not fit.

[CLiNT]

Replacing a hard drive is among the easier and more straight forward of components
to swap out on a laptop...but you need to know what your replacing.

See if you can find the tech specs on your make and model at the manufacturer's website. You want to determine whether it's IDE or SATA. I noticed that your's is a
discontinued model. But there should still be information about it somewhere like;

Where the drive is physicaly located on the underside of the machine and which screws need to be removed to access it.
What exact make and model it is, whether it's IDE (older) or some variation of SATA.

Look for guides on removal and replacement.

[TerFar]

I believe that the nx6110 will take a 250GB HDD. I'm sure that we upgraded one of the engineer's nx6101 to 250GB at work - but that was some time ago. You can pick up 120GB or 160GB very cheaply these days, so go for one of those.

[Paul T]

Hard disk manufacturers provide free software to clone the old disk onto the new disk. You just need a machine to connect both at the same time.

cheers, Paul

[Sykemuir]

Thanks for these helpful responses everybody.

Regards

Pat Macguire

[DownRiver65]

Any IDE HD (ATA-6) up to 250 gigs will work in the laptop. Also, here's a link to the 6110's specs.

nx6110 specs

[DieSse]

Ideally - get a cheap external USB drive case (for 2.5" IDE drives). Put the new drive into the case. Use cloning software to replicate your internal drive contents onto the new drive. Swap the drives over, then use to old drive for backups.

If you don't do it this way, you'll have great problems (maybe impossible) to connect both drives at the same time. Using the "Acronis" software (below) you'll be able to Clone (make an exact replica of the contents for an upgrade) - then for backups an Image (a compressed copy of all the drive contents). An image can typically contain 60-70GB contents in a 40GB image file.

Seagate/Maxtor and Western Digital both have free downloads on Acronis True Image (a restricted version, but perfectly adequate) - so it you get one of those makes you are ahead from the start.

Your system is definitely IDE and not SATA.

[Sykemuir]

Thanks for that. Actually, I have a large external HD and also have a copy of Acronis which I use for system backups. Presumably this could be used?

Regards

Pat Macguire

[John-O]

You have a couple good options, but there's a bunch of ways to do this. One alternative is to buy a couple mini-PATA adapters ($5 on ebay/amazon) and connect the old and new drives on a desktop at the same time. Clone one to the other. You can resize the system partition while you're there, or simply make a second partition for data.

What I did with my Dell Latitude D600 was picked up a HDD adapter for the flex bay on ebay for $20. Now I can pull the optical drive and use two HDDs on my laptop. Don't know if yours has this option.

Good Luck and have fun!

-John O