The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    Upgrade Hdd

    Discussion in 'LG' started by Mrs E, Sep 8, 2007.

  1. Mrs E

    Mrs E Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    2
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Hey all, I have LG LS50a, I would like to upgrade the Hard Drive. I currently have a 40g in it, unsure speed, don't know where to find this out.
    Have read that it is easy to change HD to Hitachi / TravelStar 7K100 / 100GB / 7200 / 8MB / IDE / 2.5 Mobile, is this the correct model of Hitachi?
    Also do you have to change the bios?
    On one of the forum's it says about putting the Hd into an enclosure, what does this mean please? If anyone has done this can I ask how is it running, does it increase the running tempature of the laptop. I have 2x512mb sticks of memory in laptop is this also sufficent to run this size hard drive

    Thanks so much, Learner> Mrs E
     
  2. Johnny T

    Johnny T Notebook Nobel Laureate

    Reputations:
    6,092
    Messages:
    12,975
    Likes Received:
    201
    Trophy Points:
    481
    Start > Control panel > System > Hardware > Device manager > Hardisk Dirves and look for the model number of your drive.

    I am assuming that your HDD is a 4200 rpm looking at the specs.

    You are right, a IDE (ATA) hdd is what you need, and I woudl say the Travelstar is a veyr good choice. I have got same Hitachi drive but 80GB instead of 100GB. I upgraded about a month ago and everything went smoothly.

    I think people mean putting your old hdd into an external enclosure so that you can retrive you old data (it might even have been me who suggested it :p) I don't think RAM actually matters in running a hdd, but i have got 1x256 mb and 1x1GB so we've both got around the same amount so i think it should be fine :D.

    No bio upgraded is needed, that is only for upgrading the CPU i think.

    The temp. of the Travelstar was what REALLY did surprised me... I had a 4200rpm toshiba 60GB hdd, but the 7200rpm actually ran cooler. toshiba~40C where as Hitachi 7200rpm ~ 30C. This is because the 7200rpm is a newer generation of HDDs so they run cooler.

    The Travelstar is running considerablly faster than the 4200rpm, installing programs is much much quicker and so is starting up and shuting down windows.

    Hope this helps
    Johnny
     
  3. Mrs E

    Mrs E Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    2
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Thank You Johnny, your advise and expertise is much appreciated, will go now and find out what model HDD i have

    Cheers, Have a Great Day
     
  4. beefman

    beefman Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    28
    Messages:
    200
    Likes Received:
    2
    Trophy Points:
    30
    I'd recommend the Seagate Momentus 5400RPM 160GB drive over the Hitachi 7k100. The performance is close enough to make having an extra 60gb worth far more. Sadly, there's not a 7200RPM 160gb drive available in PATA.

    As for the external enclosure, what they mean is a 2.5" USB PATA enclosure to put the new drive in so you can clone your old one over, and then put the old drive in to use as an external storage drive once you install the new one. They look like this. It sounds more complex than it is. The most difficult part is disassembling the notebook to get the old drive out. Fortunately you only have to do it once.

    You neednt' buy cloning software either. The Ultimate Boot CD for Windows includes VERY powerful cloning software that's free.