Extensa 4420 HDD upgrade help

I am planning to upgrade the HDD in my Extensa 4420-5239 and I could use some help. I am able to remove the back cover without any trouble, but for the life of me I cannot figure out how to remove the old HDD. It's SATA by the way. Thanks for your help.

 

On my 5315 you remove the cover and slide the drive back.

YMMV

James

 

did you order the HDD yet?
if not you may wish to invest $7.99 in a cheap USB DRIVE enclosure... i own 4 of these they are good for intermittent use, but there are some much nicer models available, (some w/ neoprene outter coatings for minimal shock protection, and others w/ all kinds of features like fingerprint reader
that site also has good prices on HDDs but thier choice is limited (i only buy HITACHI, IBM or TOSHIBA notebook drives)

WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS WITH THE NEW DRVE??

A: doing a fresh install of the OS or a factory recovery?? or
B: do you want to keep the data from the old drive and transfer it to the new drive?


a USB ENCLOSURE makes transfering the old drive's data to the new drive every easy...
and if you want to keep the HIDDEN PARTITION and the D2D recovery method of doing a factory restore,, then you must transer the HIDDEN PARTITION on the original HDD onto the NEW DRIVE...

there is a program called ACRONIS TRUE IMAGE which is available as a fully functional trial download... it will make an EXACT IMAGE OF THE ENTIRE HDD and is pretty easy to use! but you must have an external USB ENCLOSURE or some other method of moving the data that is compatible w/ ACRONIS or your software of choice...

so you can install the new drive in the enclosure, plug it to the laptop and run TRUE IMAGE... make an exact copy retaining current partition structure for now... YOU CAN RESIZE THE PARTITONS LATER... first get the data on the new drive and make sure it boots and still has the D2D function by pressing ALT + F10 at boot up... but exit the utility do not continue w/ it...

now to answer your actual question..most laptop HDDs are mounted in "cradles" so you have to unscrew the cradle or housing that surrounds the HDD... then it should slide away from the connector w/ just a little force... next you lift it out

unscrew the HDD from the cradle,, and then screw the new hdd in the cradle and reassemble...

then boot and test the D2D recovery function,, see if it trys to boot to a command prompt... EXIT THE UTILITY or HOLD POWER BUTTON 5 SECS to shut down....

now reboot and see if the HDD is correct... if so you can now use TRUE IMAGE to change partition sizes don't worry (YOU STILL HAVE THE ORIGINAL HDD WITH YOUR DATA STILL INTACT!)

if all is still good after resizing and REBOOTING... then you can install the original HDD in the USB ENCLOSURE and have a nifty little portable USB DRIVE,,, unless you want to keep the DATA INTACT as a backup.

if using as a SPARE EXTERNAL HDD now you format the USB DRIVE by plugging it into the laptop, double click MY COMPUTER,, right click the USB DRIVE (maybe E: or some letter higher)... from the menu click FORMAT..

now you are all done...

 

That sounds like a good thing... spare HDD's on USB. Do you think a guy could use a USB HD to run other systems such as XP instead of Vista, or Linix and still leave the original Vista on the internal?

Thanks Much.

 

Part 2... Can I grab some of the HDD's from some of my "old" PC's and put them in these USB Enclosures? Thanks again.

 

I didn't read the previous posts, but yes you can use internal HDDs as externals by installing them in proper enclosures and using them through either USB 2.0, FireWire or eSATA.
If your BIOS allows booting through USB etc, then maybe you can load an OS through a USB device, but HDDs connected to the notebook through a HUB will not be picked up by the BIOS (flash drives do get detected).

What sort of HDDs do you have ?? IDE or SATA ? 2.5" or 3.5" ? Storage ?