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[paul.77]

My work laptop has just died. I think it's the motherboard as it just will not switch on.
my question is,
If i get a new laptop can I swap over the hard drive and will my info be saved?
thanks in advance
paul

[TheBoy]

My work laptop has just died. I think it's the motherboard as it just will not switch on.
my question is,
If i get a new laptop can I swap over the hard drive and will my info be saved?
thanks in advance
paul

Not exactly.  Assuming the HDD is still OK, put it in a caddy, and then plug in to a USB port and copy data back to new one. Afterwards, you have an external HDD to use for backups then

Caddies about £10 from http://www.svp.co.uk, but you need to know if yours is a PATA/IDE (older) or SATA (newer) laptop HDD.

[TheBoy]

Specifically here:

http://svp.co.uk/category/drive_cases_and_caddies

Find a suitable 2.5" one to match your existing laptop drive, ie, PATA or SATA

[paul.77]

thanks for the quick responce.
how do i find outb if it's pata or sata?

[supermop]

The disk itself will tell you if it's PATA or SATA if you remove it and look at the sticker. If it's newish, I'm guessing its SATA.

If you get a new laptop of the exact same specification however, you will be able to swap out the drive and boot straight into your old build as it was before dying. I do this at work quite a lot with our Dell machines.

[TheBoy]

The disk itself will tell you if it's PATA or SATA if you remove it and look at the sticker. If it's newish, I'm guessing its SATA.

If you get a new laptop of the exact same specification however, you will be able to swap out the drive and boot straight into your old build as it was before dying. I do this at work quite a lot with our Dell machines.

Yup. But I'm guessing its more than a year old (hence not being done under warranty) and not a business machine (as it would have a 3yr warranty normally), so chances of getting identical model is slim  :-/

[Taxi_Driver]

The disk itself will tell you if it's PATA or SATA if you remove it and look at the sticker. If it's newish, I'm guessing its SATA.

If you get a new laptop of the exact same specification however, you will be able to swap out the drive and boot straight into your old build as it was before dying. I do this at work quite a lot with our Dell machines.

Yup. But I'm guessing its more than a year old (hence not being done under warranty) and not a business machine (as it would have a 3yr warranty normally), so chances of getting identical model is slim  :-/

You could have a look on fleabay.........recently i bought a Dell l400 without HD or PSU.....but i already had these from my dead l400.

Cost me £35   Plugged in HD and PSU (swapped memory over as it only had 128M, my dead l400 had 256M) Updated bios from V01 to V08

And up and running in mins  

[paul.77]

it's 18months old, cant find sata or pata anywhere on the hdd.
is there another way to tell?

td great idea but nothing on ebay at the moment.thanks

[dippydave]

the connections are very differnet on IDE and Sata - maybe you could post a pic of your slot?! :O

on a different laptop tangent, anyone got experience with portable 2.5 drives like WD, or Seagate? (i won't touch Freecom, whatever they use inside!) or is it better to get a caddy as linked to before and put an Hitachi, TOshiba or other drive in?!!

mm what's your favourite drive - an i don't mean A roads!!:D

[Martin_1962]

Fujitsu MH range seems good

Use the old PVR 20GB as a portable drive the Twin now has 100GB drive

[dippydave]

Fujitsu MH range seems good

Use the old PVR 20GB as a portable drive the Twin now has 100GB drive

i'll check out fujitsu, ta!

although i need a tad more than 20GB. looking at at least 250 for my new 2.5", and gonna need a 3.5 1TB for my main portable drive!
then we're looking at a few terabytes for home storage.. but that's a long story!

[Martin_1962]

Fujitsu MH range seems good

Use the old PVR 20GB as a portable drive the Twin now has 100GB drive

i'll check out fujitsu, ta!

although i need a tad more than 20GB. looking at at least 250 for my new 2.5", and gonna need a 3.5 1TB for my main portable drive!
then we're looking at a few terabytes for home storage.. but that's a long story!

Fujitsu are not cheap but they spin up fast and are reliable - hence Pace using them

[paul.77]

I'll put up a pic tomorrow.
I tried the hdd in another laptop and all the info is still there.
thanks for all the help so far chaps.

[Taxi_Driver]

I'll put up a pic tomorrow.
I tried the hdd in another laptop and all the info is still there.
thanks for all the help so far chaps.

Do you have a 3rd PC? Just wondering possiblity of networking em so you could copy important stuff over........or even copying the files to your ISP (unless its a lot or files are big)

[korum]

An IDE HDD will have about 40 pins for the connection while the SATA HDD will have 2 blade like connections.

If your buy a brand new laptop it will have a SATA HDD, so if yours is IDE then you can just get a caddy and then you have a portable back up drive.

HTH

pete