Vaio Laptop PCG-FX405 upgrade

[BrianLawrence]

Hi there,
I have had a Vaio for a few years now and am (still) very happy with it. However, I would like to upgrade the hard drive (20gb currently) and RAM (256mb currently), if possible. Any idea about a) compatible parts and b) doability? I live in the UK. Any thoughts, greatly appreciated.

[rich912]

Hi Brian and welcome to the forum.

You should have no problem with either of theses upgrades. Any 60GB hard disk of the same form factor should be fine and here is a guide for the procedure. This is for an FX 501 but the architecture will be the same.

You can upgrade to 512 MB of RAM and I recommend that you have a look at
Crucial.com
Bear in mind that your existing RAM may be 2x128 MB chips so to upgrade to 512 MB you would need 2x256 chips.

[BrianLawrence]

Cheers Rich,

"Form Factor" in lay terms, is size; in my case a 2.5 inch drive right? I am technically challenged, sorry although I know how to plug in components!

Hope I am not pushing my luck but is there also a way of copying files from old drive to new, as I assume you cannot have a master and slave combi in a laptop like you could in a desktop?

Appreciate your taking time out to assist.

[rich912]

Yes 2.5" by, usually, 9.5mm high (a few are 12mm high).

If you purchase a 2.5" hard drive enclosure (something like this ) you will be able to connect your old drive via USB and copy any files that you require.

[BrianLawrence]

You are a star Rich; 1,000 thanks. Now all I have to do is figure out how to run The Sims on it and then I'm laughing don't suppose you know the answer to that as well??

[rich912]

You're very welcome Brian:smileyhappy:

The only 'Sims' I know of is a pupil database used by Hantsnet and that is only because my wife is a schools admin officer....:smileywink:

[BrianLawrence]

Hi there,

£130 the poorer, I now have my new Seagate 60gig hard drive and 512meg of RAM. I am happy about swapping out the hardware but once the 60gig beast (!) is in place just wanted to check next steps.....
1) I have created a Seagate disk wizard on a couple of floppies;
2) printed out the Seagate notes; and
3) the Sony recovery software.
next:
1) boot up with the first disk in the floppy drive;
2) follow on screen prompts; and
3) once the hard drive is formatted, reboot with the sony recovery disk and follow onscreen prompts.
Have I missed anything? I am not 100% certain how the laptop 'knows' that it has to boot from the floppy then the CD. Is this done through hitting F2 when the laptop powers up?

Any thoughts, gratefully appreciated.

Oh nearly forgot, I have a (legal bought and paid for by the way) copy of Office on the old drive that I would like to keep. Can you simply copy it accross to the new drive using a caddy? I intend to use the old drive as back-up and would prefer Office to remain 'on-board'.

[rich912]

Hi Brian,

I am not entirely certain whether the first part of the operation (Seagate disk wizard) is necessary as the Sony recovery procedure will format and partition the drive. I would suggest that you try booting from your recovery CD first but revert to the floppy if that doesn’t work.

To set the boot device sequence tap F2 at boot to enter the BIOS settings. I cannot remember which tab the option is on but there are so few options available with Sony BIOS that you should have no difficulty in finding it. You should also enter the Bios after installing the new hard drive (before OS installation) to check that it is recognized.

Unfortunately copying installed programs such as Office to a different drive will not work, neither will attempting to run the original installation on the old hard disk. You will need to reinstall all third party programs from the original setup media.

[BrianLawrence]

Hi Rich,

Thanks for the feedback. I have tried to reload the OS but it hangs (well I gave up after 15 mins) when it tries to create a partition. Any ideas?

[rich912]

Hi Brian,

Did you partition and format the disk using the Seagate wizard or jump straight in with the recovery media?