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    How commonly are laptop HDDs married/locked to specific brand/unit?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by HPpavilion, Jan 28, 2008.

  1. HPpavilion

    HPpavilion Notebook Consultant

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    I upgraded the HDD on my HP Pavilion ze2000 series a while ago.

    I transferred the contents of my old HDD to the new one by putting the new one into an external USB enclosure and cloning the old drive to it.

    I then physically swapped the drives and the computer has been running on the new HDD ever since. The old hard drive does not function at all when it's put in the aforementioned enclosure, but it functions fine on my friend's HP laptop, which isn't a ze2000.

    I think the HDD is locked to prevent it from used on a different computer, well at least a non-HP computer much like XBOX hard drives being locked.

    Anyone know?
     
    HPpavilion, Jan 28, 2008
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  2. ejl

    ejl fudge

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    that's odd. i have an hp tc4400, and my hard drive that i exchanged out works fine in the external.
     
    ejl, Jan 28, 2008
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  3. AndyC_772

    AndyC_772 Notebook Consultant

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    I've never come across this with PCs - why would a manufacturer do this?

    How is the drive formatted? (NTFS, FAT32, ext3)? Which OS are the various PCs using?
     
    AndyC_772, Jan 28, 2008
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