Hard Disk replacement

I have Aspire 5112WLMi (conf. in the signature) for 4 years now, and my HDD is almost done!
I want to buy a new one with much biger capacity (thinking about WD 320GB), how can I know will my system support this HDD?!

Has anybody installed this big HDD on 5112WLMi?!

 

Two steps
1) use search facility
2) Find This

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1) use device manager to get the exact part number of the current drive. Suffix letters and numbers can be critical
2) Go to manufacturer website and find datasheet. Is is SATA or PATA, how big is it, how high, what power draw.
3) Now for simplicity look for the latest model on that site that is the same type and size and has a bigger capacity or better performance.
More complicated version of 3 . .
You do need to get the SATA or PATA bit right. If your current drive is SATA 150 say you can use SATA150 or SATA 2 or 300 etc quite happily
If the power draw is slightly more don't worry too much. Installing a 7200 rpm drive may draw substantially more power at start up so check this. It may also vibrate more. not usual on 2.5" drives though .
If the new drive is going to be HIGHER (as many larger drives now are you need to open the laptop to assess if it would fit : Also check the biggest option available on your model at time of sale.

Free tools like Paragon's Backup and Restore make easy work of taking a snapshot of your whole drive and scaling it onto a new unformatted one before the first boot. Just make sure you are 100% sure what you copy to where !!

This might nevertheless be a good moment for a re-install though if that sounds like fun.

When doing the swap take care to not lose screws, displace plastic insulators or spacers and be very careful to identify and remove/replace any connection adapters/spacers. Generally drives are supplied with any jumpers etc set to idiot proof mode but read the data sheet first !.

 

Hello BruBoo, thanks a lot for your advices!
Let's go from the beginning...

My HDD is Toshiba MK8032GSX (got this info from EVEREST), and the largest hdd from this series is 120GB!
Also, that was the largest HDD in this model of Acer Aspire that I got (5112WLMi)!
And I ordered WD 240GB today, so I am worried now...

My current drive is SATA150 I think?! ( Buffer-to-Host Data Rate : 150 MB/s - info from EVEREST) Is that it??!
So if it is, you say that I can use SATA2? That is good news, because this hdd I ordered is SATA2!

Also, this new hdd is also 5400rpm, I didn't want to order a 7200rpm because of more heating!
I hope that this was a good decision...
As for Windows reinstall, I am just waiting for this new hdd to do it (no sense to do that on a corrupted hdd)


On the Toshiba website, in FAQ's, I found that there are some systems that are unable to recognize the new larger Hard Drives (can see only 137GB), and that there is some software that can fix this! Anybody know the name of this software?!!

Also, it would be great to hear from somebody with this same netobook that I got (I know that there were a lot of 5112WLMi owners on this forum before), who also did a HDD replacement.

 

The 137GB problem is pretty ancient, not sure how old your system is but would be surprised if you hit this problem. After about 2003 you can be 99% certain your Bios supports it and so does XP SP3 and thereafter. Even if all this is not true partition your drive into parts less than 137 GB each and you are fine.

As I said SATA 300 is supposed to be fully backward compatable even though some drives have a belt and braces jumper to force 150 rates. Don't stress this one either

You don't say the exact disk you chose but it is small enough to be most likely 9.5mm high. So is your original drive so it looks good.

Dont forget to save the OEM license information from the original windows install if you are still using that or wish to reinstall that as your clean start.

Just worth looking into What OS you are installing. There are twists around drivers and partitions if you are putting a retail version of XP, (particularly if earlier than a SP3 disk) back as a clean install although the manufacturers OEM windows disk should not have this concern. Vista is better and W7 pretty self sufficient.

 

OK, thanks! Great!
I am using now XP SP3, but I installed WIN7 also (dual boot) and then the HDD problems started to manifest!
( disc corrupted fault all the time on WIN7 partition)

I have no idea what are you talking about here!

I want to buy this hdd -> http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=512

Of course, have that OEM licence writen down to a several location long time ago (the sticker under the notebook is long gone)

 

W7 Disk corrupted all the time : Apply hotfix support.microsoft.com/kb/975778

Your Drive looks ok but opening laptop up and careful examination of / transfer of connectors, insulation etc needed.
. . . of SATA, just ignore it

OEM license irrelevant if you are going to install W7, otherwise you can restore the original license with online tools.

Good luck

 

Just wan to say hdd successfully installed!!
No big deal, just plug it in and it's done!

BruBoo, thanks for your time and advices...

 

Glad to help