Replace Hard Drive

jacnorm

I have looked at previous posts and think I can safely replace the hard drive in our del inspiron 1501 but, when I put the new one in what do I do then? Will it work when I turn the laptop on and install windows from disc? I have not done anything like this before so apologies if I have to keep asking for help.

KillerWatt

jac/norm wrote: »

but, when I put the new one in what do I do then?

You boot the machine from the Windows CD, partition the hard drive, format it, install Windows, then install all your hardware drivers (video, sound, chipset, network, etc).

jacnorm

thanks for the quick reply

Donnie

Erm....do you actually have a Windows Disc with a valid licence key?

PiLoT

Donnie wrote: »

Erm....do you actually have a Windows Disc with a valid licence key?

Its DEll so its OEM. disc are provided by dell and they dont ask for the key when installing. if he wants to use a non dell version of the OS (Media centre version of xp i believe) then the key is stuck to the bottom of the laptop, (on the RAM chips covering)

JasX

...and of course worst case if it all goes to pot they can pop the original drive back in to revert back to how it is now (ie working) while they work out what they needed to do differently/what they were missing

kwikbreaks

By far the simplest way to upgrade a laptop HDD is to clone the existing disk to the new one and then physically swap them over.

That does require a USB HDD caddy (less than £10 on eBay and you can use the old disk as a USB one with it after).

I use Trueimage to do this but there are lots of freebies to do the same. Here are some - http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/backupandimage.shtml