Question for Computer Geeks

[McAvoy]

I own a HP dv9535 laptop. It has two 2.5" 120 gigabyte hard drives (combined 240 gb). The Primary has everything you need to run the computer and the Secondary is just there for space. I have been thinking of replacing the Secondary with a larger 320 gigabyte hard drive (combined 440 gb). I have already removed my secondary to see if I can remove it without affecting the computer. I started it and nothing went wrong.

Now the big question are there differences between one manufacturer to another? Like would my HP be capable of taking a Samsung?

Now, my idea to have the computer recognize it is to do a system recovery and save everything I want to keep on my external hard drive. Is there a better way?

I know many people I talked to said that it would be better to have an external hard drive. While I agree that there are no laptop hard drives that match my 750 gb external. You have to plug it into a wall socket as well as a computer. I am going on cruise and space is at a premium. Replacing my internal laptop secondary hard drive if successful will give my laptop much larger space.

[*zeo]

An HP, hmm... you have my sympathies

Whatever you do don't ever hit that keyboard hard, they're all plastic (including the spring mechanism) and easy to shatter. Saw someone casually hit one with a magazine by accident and keys just went flying, with quite a few of them perminently cracked.

Anyway, I know they have external drives up to 500 GB at least that are bus powered and don't require an external power adapter. (Just check that it says bus powered when buying one) Though depending on your area they may be harder to find, so you may have to get it online.

But so long as system files aren't placed on the second drive you should be able to add any other drive that the laptop can handle. So usually you just have to check what hard drives your laptop supports, otherwise it should just be plug and play.

Though you may have to format the drive but that's a fairly straight forward procedure, windows has the utility to perform it.

The only time you really have to worry about hard drive compatability is with a raid setup or whether your system came pre-configured to use the 2nd drive for backup or something like that, since many offer the option to use the 2nd drive for recovery instead of providing a recovery disc.

Though depending on RPM and how stable your environment is you may want to do regular disc burn backups. You could also mirror your primary drive onto your present 2nd drive and just keep it in case your primary crashes as an emergency backup, with most of your files on the second drive you could be back in busines within minutes that way.

[McAvoy]

The HP I have isn't that bad. I got it becasue a buddy of mine has had his for since 2002. he's upgraded it several times and it still functions. Though eventually like everything else in the world it died. I went through three laptops since I joined the Navy. One literally melted the hard drive, the other is somewhere in the Persian Gulf's water right now and the other took a bullet to the screen. This one so far has been good to me so far.

The primary hard drive has everything it needs to run the computer. The secondary is just for added space, which is why I am actually considering to do this.

I have considered once I get the new hard drive up and running without any problems, I'll use the removed secondary hard drive as a back up for the original primary hard drive.

[*zeo]

Keyboards are a problem on all HP notebooks, so be careful regardless. It's very easy to break it, just type softly and don't let anyone who slams keys to ever use it.

Should really have gotten yourself a tough book if you're going to put it through that sort of laptop care as your last few

Especially the water proof ones, some like Dell even offer military discounts of 10% off (can sign up to get a special purchase card from them) and in most cases that can be combined with other sale discounts. Making up the difference in cost of tough books and giving you more options next time.

Or consider support issues, Panasonic for example has teamed with Tobyhanna (a renowned military service depot). So you can get support for Panasonic tough books world-wide and is open to all military branches.

Not to mention you can check military resellers for rugged, water proof, 2.5" HD's. So your hard drive will survive even if the rest of your notebook doesn't.

[McAvoy]

The Navy has Panasonic Tough books. They're not so tough, especially the touch screens. Though they do withstand a good 100 foot fall pretty easily.

I don't let anyone touch my laptop anymore. The last person who touched my laptop was my roommates wife and she seriously screwed it up.