HP Laptops No Longer Enable Consumer to Replace Hard Drive

I have a new Toshiba laptop that does not have access to the innards. Its not a major issue on this particular PC as its a special purpose that will never fill up the existing drive. It is only for my recording studio "on-site recording". If the hard drive were to die I would have to find out how to get into it and change it.

Wynona said:

OK, I found what I need, but it's so very involved that I don't think I want to tackle it. It is illustrated, though. That's the good news, but it gets worse from there.

First I have to take out ten screws . . . the five more . . . then remove the optical drive, the USB board and a cable or three. That's while it's laying on its belly. Then I have to flip it over and remove the top panel, some more cables and finally, the hard drive. Then if I'm lucky and don't lose any screws, I can reverse the order of removal and put it all back together.

Asus Gaming notebooks still have replaceable hard drives and at least 2 slots to add RAM, depending on the vendor you buy from. Some Vendor are putting a single 8 GB stick in one of the 2 available slots!!!!! those guys were out of the states I think. My only advise for anyone buying Asus Gaming Laptops is to verify exact specific configurations. They are selling a very high end version that claims a 512 GB M.2 NVMe SSD sounds great until you get one that has 2 256 GB M.2 SSD that can't even be run in RAID 0. I don't know what there business and consumer notebooks have

Wynona said:

Hmmm, I hadn't thought of putting the original drive into an enclosure. I have three externals, so I guess I don't need to do that. :) I already have one laptop drive on the shelf with those other spinners.

And, you're right about them being 5400 RPM; I'd forgotten that too.

Hi there

slightly OT - but you can use old laptop drives very successfully as external HDD's without using any enclosures / power -- simply use a SATA-->USB2 or SATA-->USB3 connector and plug in to the appropriate USB port on PC / laptop. The USB3 adapter is backward compatible with USB2.

Actually compared with 5200 RPM spinners in desktops Laptop HDD's aren't so horrible -- better though if you can find (still some available) some of the Hitachi 7200 RPM laptop HDD's --these are fine but hard to find. Believe it or not an old Philips laptop (how long ago did they make laptops !!) had one of these --still doing sterling service as an external HDD even though the laptop went to the City Tip years ago !!!!!!!.

Slightly OT I know but as external HDD's laptop drives aren't always so hideous. Note of course an SSD is always better. But a load here tinker around and repair computers -- if the machine is broken and needs to be tossed it's usually worth salvaging the HDD's - especially in laptops --make also good portable backup devices for your image backups too.

In any case I'd always carry a couple of old laptop HDD's rather than two or 3 USB sticks -- they are much faster, more reliable and really don't take up any significant space either. You don't need caddies or enclosures either -- I've used these for years with just the USB adapter cables I've mentioned --never a single problem with a single one of these --they've been dropped in busy metro stations (e.g London's Victoria or Oxford Circus underground stations), been through how many security checks at airports I've lost count of and still no problems.

If you don't need a cady if using these as as external drives don't bother with one.


Cheers
jimbo

Get one of those (also comes in USB3) and you can reuse all your salvaged HDDs.

Thermaltake BlacX ST0005U External Hard Drive SATA Enclosure Docking Station 2.5 eSATA - Newegg.com

whs said:

Get one of those (also comes in USB3) and you can reuse all your salvaged HDDs.

Thermaltake BlacX ST0005U External Hard Drive SATA Enclosure Docking Station 2.5 eSATA - Newegg.com

Hi there

for 2.5 inch HDD's why bother --what's wrong with USB2 or USB3 SATA-->USB converter. On these sorts of devices even a direct esata connector into your computer won't buy you much speed (unless it's an SSD).

For the bigger HDD's from desktops etc then it makes sense but not for 2.5 inch disks where the cheap adapter works just fine and doesn't need a separate power supply either.

Cheers
jimbo

I use it for extra storage - e.g. to place my images. The HDDs I use have been recovered from my laptops when I put SSDs in.

I also use it with a SSD that contains Linux. I load Linux from there. And since it is a USB3 model, that works very well - performance wise.