Even though I build my own PCs, the thought of upgrading my notebook’s hard disk drive has been intimidating. I figured there were two possible outcomes: either I succeeded or I turned my notebook into an expensive paperweight. Well, the ez upgrade kit from Apricorn was SO EASY to use that I was impressed. While older notebook kits use a PCMCIA slot card, the ez upgrade kit uses the notebook’s USB port. Here’s the steps:
1. Put your new notebook drive in the external drive box that comes with the kit. Plug the drive into your notebook’s USB port.
2. Boot from the Apricorn CD or just install the software. Booting transfers data faster.
3. Run the Apricorn software which basically bit copies your existing data to your new notebook drive.
4. Unplug your notebook (you need to use direct power during the transfer as it can take quite a while; two hours in the case of my mere ten gigs).
5. Remove your notebook’s battery.
6. Remove your notebooks’ hard drive. HA! I read that instruction and thought: WTF? I have never seen a notebook arrive with instructions on how to remove the hard drive. Fortunately CMS Products web site has instructions on how to remove the hard disk drive from a wide variety of notebooks.
7. In my particular case there was a complication. The drive sits in a casing held in by four screws. In their infinite wisdom, Toshiba put glue in the screw holes to keep things truly secure. Three of the screws with a bit of extra effort unscrewed easily. The fourth screw would not unscrew so I had to cut away that part of the casing in order to remove the drive. It was pretty frustrating, but in the end I managed to get the drive out without totally ruining the case.
8. Put the new drive in your notebook, replace the battery and power it up.
With the exception of the unruly screw, this whole process worked perfectly. An added bonus is that you can put your old drive in the external case and use it for additional storage.
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