Help for an idiot to upgrade dell inspiron laptop pls

haven't used laptops that much, but at least with the ones I used you could upgrade the hdd and the ram without opening the whole thing. If you open the whole thing then you could probably upgrade the cpu.
 
Any ideas how to convert the old hard drive that i remove from laptop into a portable USB connected hard drive? is there a special box and cable that i need to buy to place this into? or special formatting/set up required for this? or can it not be done.

Thanks...........ooh so many questions...but you guys are so so helpful lol
 
Yes, there is a special box for those external drives. Also, that RAM will fit. It's a preety decent system.
 
donkey said:
Any ideas how to convert the old hard drive that i remove from laptop into a portable USB connected hard drive? is there a special box and cable that i need to buy to place this into? or special formatting/set up required for this? or can it not be done.

Thanks...........ooh so many questions...but you guys are so so helpful lol


I think to convert an internal to an external youll need an enclosure ( this could vary from 2.5" to 3.5" depending on the hard drive youd like to put in )

You also need a USB power lead, I think most enclosures do come with these but do check before purchasing. Not much is needed to install the external drive itself unless your making it the master/primary drive.

I just plugged mine into the USB cable and got the message 'New hardware...' bla bla bla. Though Im sure if it dosnt work that way, drivers can be found on the hard drive manufactuars website.

Good luck!
 
donkey said:
thanks guys, ive just purchased a 120gb samsung drive 5400rpm - should do nicely i hope

Is the drive a laptop drive? Just thought id check as there are different sizes and connectors. Also enclosures are really cheap, i got one off ebay for £5 and i use my old 30Gb laptop drive as a USB data drive for keeping all my software on for doing installations etc. I got a cable with the enclosure
 
This is what i purchased:

BRAND NEW SEALED 120Gb Samsung 2.5' Laptop Hard Drive 5400RPM 8M UK

(3 years warranty)

Features Specifications:
Capacity 120 GB
Speed 5400 RPM
Data Buffer 8MB
Type: Hard drive - internal
Form Factor: 2.5" x 1/8H
Weight: 0.1 kg
Ultra ATA (PATA) Interface - ATA 133
Data Transfer Rate: 100 MBps
Average Seek Time: 12 ms
 
Guys i have just received my hard drive and am about to make the change. Just want to know how i get the old drive to become blank.........i mean at the moment it has all the windows files etc, but i want to have a blank drive that i can use externally, so dhow do i format it to have nothing on it but still be able to use it? do i have to use the win xp disk on it? or once its an external drive can i just delete every file on it?
 
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