How to choose larger hard drive for old laptop?

[Chris Wilson]

I have an elderly Compaq Evo N600C laotop I use for mapping and car diagnostics because it has a proper serial port. It only has a small hard drive in it and it's nearly full. I want to keep it and fit a bigger drive. The HP site gives the following storage specs:

 

Storage Diskette Drives Optional Diskette Drive

 

 

Optical Drives DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive

CD-RW Drive or

DVD-ROM Drive or

CD-ROM Drive

 

 

Hard Drives One of the following:

 

40-GB SMART Hard Drive

 

30-GB SMART Hard Drive

 

20-GB SMART Hard Drive

 

 

 

What sort of size drive can I get for it? I assume it's not a SATA drive, but what is it I need to look for? Just an ATA drive? What's a SMART drive? Where's the best place to buy one? Anyone here selling one? Thanks

[comorin219]

could,nt you just get an external one then you could have 100's of GB ( just a thought)

[bodilx6]

Hi Chris

 

It's a ATA drive. ATA-5 to be specific. You should be able to use any ATA drive available in 2.5" size.

Lots of info here:

http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/10886_div/10886_div.HTML

 

I would choose as large a drive that fits the physical parameters of the largest of the drives in that link. But you should easily be able to get a cheap 100+gb drive in there.

 

Trouble is; do you want the installed OS, applications and data to remain intact or would you be able to do a re-install? If you would keep the data on the drive, you should look into getting a 2.5" external box for the new drive and then use a disc clone util to copy everything over. The box itself shouldn't be more that 20£ or so

If you can reinstall, that would be best as you will have a faster computer

 

Alternatively just get a small external USB drive and and use that for all data and keep OS and apps on the system drive. However, as far as I can find, the computer only supports USB 1.1 which makes such an USB drive really really slow to use. Also, the cloneing mentioned above WILL take a loooong time, but that should be ok as it's only needed to be done that one time.

 

/Stefan

[Chris Wilson]

I have an external drive but it's a nuisance when working on cars with it flailing about, would like to fit a bigger internal one, but thanks for the suggestion. I will use the external one to Ghost the hard drive image.

[Chris Wilson]

Would this do:

 

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/WD-2-5-SERIAL-ATA-HARD-DRIVE-250GB-WD2500BEVT-OEM-/110612944698?pt=UK_Computing_HardDrives_RL&hash=item19c10b973a

 

Thanks!

[bodilx6]

Good idea using you existing drive to ghost the disk.

I would go for something like THIS as a new drive.

According to the link I posted before, that should fit nicely in the "mulitbay drive adaptor". And its chep @ 35£ or so..

 

EDIT:

The one you suggested is Serial ATA. You need ATA (also called Parallel ATA) according to the link above.

I also did a search that supported the fact that the computer is ATA and not S-ATA.

 

You can check yourself by getting the drive out and checking the interface. ATA is like 30 little pins and S-ATA is more of a flat plastic connector with connection points on it. Also, the drive itself should say on the sticker.

[Chris Wilson]

OK, bought one of those new off Ebay for £34.99 thanks!! It is ATA, didn't realise getting at it was so easy. Glad I asked, could easily have bought that SATA by mistake...