"Should I use internal or external drive to swap out with current laptop hard drive?"

Asked by newuser15045111 17 months ago

Details:

I have an HP Pavilion dv6000 laptop with a basically full 100 GB hard drive. I would like to put in a larger internal hard drive (320 GB), but would like to use the old drive as an external. Would it be easier and more economical to:
1) Buy a new internal drive and an external USB housing for my old drive?
or
2) Buy an external 2.5" drive, remove it from the housing and switch it with my current drive?

If #2, do you have a recommendation of which drives would be easiest to remove?

Thanks!


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"Buy a 2.5'' Hard drive enclosure and place your old Laptop hard drive within."
 by Benyboy on Aug 25 2008 (17 months ago)
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Buy a 2.5'' Hard drive enclosure and place your old Laptop hard drive within, by doing this you will end up saving money depending upon the enclosure you purchase.

You do have to determine which type of hard drive your laptop has, EIDE/PATA or the newer SATA, this will matter because there are different enclosures made for each type. If you head to a large retail store like Best Buy, you can pick one of these enclosures up for around 40-50 dollars.

Anyway, keep in mind you will need to reformat the new 320gb hard drive you are installing, which can be a pain. :)

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Both of these drives are 2.5'', one is SATA one is EIDE, cheap fixes that just go through USB 2.0, which isn't bad, not fast or anything. You can choose an enclosure which uses Firewire 400 or Esata connections, make sure your laptop has these or else is usless. though these connections will transfer movies/pictures/data 70-100% faster than USB 2.0.
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"Option 1, of what you have listed."
 by IchtheosaurusRex on Aug 25 2008 (17 months ago)
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Given the options you listed, you would be better off purchasing a new internal HDD and putting the old one into an enclosure.  If you buy an external HDD that is already contained within an enclosure, you will probably find a sticker on it that says "Warranty void if case is opened" or something to that effect.  That means you will have no recourse if the disk fries itself two days after you install in in your computer.

 

There's another reason to do it this way: if you buy an external enclosure compatible with the same kind of drive you're putting into your laptop, you should be able to transfer your boot partition from the original disk to the new one.  Get a copy of Partition Magic or Partition Commander to do this. Otherwise, you'll have to reinstall Windows and all of your applications to the new HDD when you get it, and you'll have a lot of wasted space on the old disk whey you move it to the enclosure.
Sources: Experience

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"I would just buy an extenal hard drive!"
 by JeffSilva on Aug 25 2008 (17 months ago)
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I think the most practical thing would be buying a new external hard drive. That way you can back up all your stuff and only have in the computer the stuff you need on a daily basis. I don't know if there is a hard drive that big (320Gb) for that specific model. You would have to check that first.

 

I would just buy a big external hard drive. They have some very small ones, pocket size that are ideal for carrying around.

 

Let me know if you have more questions.
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Latest post on this question's discussion board:

I'm going with a new 500Gb internal I bought on ebay for $83 and an enclosure for $12 for the old drive. I'll end up with an 80Gb external for backups and music, and an internal that rocks. Now all I have to do is the labor :-)
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