Changing the Hard Drive on my VGN-AR11M

[Nainy]

Hello there,

Just a pretty quick and hopefully simple question. Can I change the hard drive on my VGN-AR11M, the 4200rpm drive it is just a little too slow. Anyone have any recommendations as to what 7200rpm hard drive would be compatible with my laptop?

Also, how can I get an image of what I have on my hard drive (have more than 4.7GB, so I cannot use a DVD), the only real reason I want the image is for the pre-installed utilities that Sony put on the hard drive i.e. the operating system and so I can recover and reinstall the operating system with the new hard drive and some of the other Sony utilities that Sony put on there.

Lastly, if imaging of the hard drive is not possible, is there a way to connect the hard drive that I have taken out of my laptop back to the laptop, whilst the new hard drive is in there?

hehe this has turned out to be a not so simple question as I thought

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

Tee

p.s How do I reply to this post if someone answers without posting a new post?

[kee-lo_]

Hi Tee,

You need a drive which is Serial ATA-150 - like the TOSHIBA MK1234GSX 120GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache Serial ATA150 Notebook Hard Drive - OEM; found on NewEgg, sadly that's in the US, but I am sure it'll be coming to the UK.

With Norton Ghost, you should easily be able to transfer the HDDR, but it's an advanced procedure.

Yes, you need an enclosure, Icy Dock do some excellent ones, but they're going to set you back around £50.

See my pic for the last question

[Nainy]

Thanks for that Kee-Lo,

I am going to have a look to find some more Serial ATA-150 Hard Drives on google. Are these the only ones that will fit on my VGN-AR11M?

I have looked at some enclosures how do they actually work ... do you put the external drive into the enclosure and then connect it to your pc/laptop via USB/Firewire?

Thank you for the picture, i found it just before looking at the picture .. lol

Tee

[kee-lo_]

No worries.

As for the enclosure, it's a box with an IDE/SATA connector, a power cable and you just connect those two up to your HDD. Then you plug it into a USB 2/Firewire port, switch on and Windows will find it for you.