Cf-30 Toughbook

I Purchased A Cf-30 Toughbook Which Has An 80 Gb Hard Drive At 5400 Rpm. I Want To Put A 250 Gb Hard Drive At 7200 Rpm. Do I Have To Make Any Changes To The Bios Or Do Anything Else If I Change The Hard Drive. I Went Into The Bios And It Shows Me What I Have But It Wont Allow Me To Make Any Changes. If Anyone Could Give Me Any Insight It Would Be Greatly Appreciated.

 

You first have to know what interface the hard drive uses, IDE/ATA or SATA. Up through the CF-29 the drives were/are ATA, I know nothing of the CF-30. It has been pretty much established around here that 100GB is the upper limit of what was ever available in ATA 7200rpm drives. There is a 7200rpm thread just down the the way a bit with lots of info. The bad news, Hitachi, the brand of choice around here has stopped making the drives, and if you can find one you are going to have to pay more than $300 for it. Welcome to the forum, I'm just up earlier than the rest, the heavies will weigh in later.

 

The CF-30 is a SATA drive... Hitachi stopped making the IDE drives... I'm not sure what the largest 7200rpm drive is that you can get in a laptop drive. You'll have to do some shopping and comparing.

You should have to do anything except to load the recovery disks/load the os/ clone the drive. You shouldn't have to play with the BIOS at all.

 

I also bought a CF30 that came with an 80GB hard drive. It is SATA connection. You do not need to do anything in the BIOS. I purchased a Hitachi 100GB 7200rpm drive. All you need to do is take out the cage, unscrew it, replace the existing one with the new drive (I don't know the max 7200rpm drive currently, but I heard 200 to 250GB) and pop the cage back in and you're good to go. Of course, don't forget to reinstall windows or the OS of your choice.

 

Outrigger, Thanks for the response. I was also told that if you purchase Norton's Ghost 14.0 you connect the new drive to the USB port on the notebook, run Norton 14.0 and copy the entire drive to the new drive. Once that's done just replace the old drive with the new one and your done.

 

To Capt.dogfis and Toughbook NBR Moderator, Thanks for the imput it was very helpful.

 

I have no experience with copying the full drive, but I'm sure others on here have and can chime in.

 

Hi! I usually use the acronis true image and its easy to use. You need a usb hdd adapter(of crse for SATA) for your new drive, just open the software then go to drive management and then clone. Just follow the instruction and your set to go.


ohlip

 

I just ordered acronis true image 11 from Newegg, but I read some REALLY bad reviews after the fact. (I'm looking to upgrade my HDD.) If the clone drive fails when I try to install it, then I can live with it--I'll just try something else. But will I need the original boot disk to put the original drive back in? Cuz...I uh...kind of lost that disk.

 

gotta 100GB 7200RPM/16MB Cache in mine and it works great (although full cuz i installed Vista Business on a 2nd partition )

 

I use Acronis True Image to clone all the drives I set up. It is a great tol. I just set it in automatic mode and let it go. I use two USB external drive kits. I hook them bot up to my desktop and copy away. But you can also install it on your laptop and use the USB connection to copy everything over to the target drive.

The cool thing about Arcronis is that if you only need to use it once... You can download their trial version to do it.

It doesn't get any easier than that!

 

Just a little update. I got my CF-30 back which was retrofitted with an antennae for the built in Verizon EV-DO (which works great). They also installed a GPS module (I installed DeLorme Street and Atlas) and a fingerprint reader (I haven't used it yet). The GPS works fine. I purchased Norton Ghost 14.0 and did a complete copy of my hard drive (80 GB at 5400 RPM) to a 200 GB Hitachi hard drive at 7200 RPM and it was easier then I thought it would be. I have not yet switched the drives but from what I have been told the difference in RPM's should not be a concern.

 

It was really nice that people who I have never met or know were willing to take the time to answer my questions and send me information or their personal experiences to help me out. Thanks to all! Joe

 

Joe... Can you tell me how much Heartland charged you to install the GPS? I'm curious.

Thanks,

Rick

Helping out is what we're all about here!

 

To: (Rick) Toughbook NBR Moderator: The GPS module was $376.00 and I think it was $100.00 or $150.00 for Heartland to install it. I dealt with a really great guy (Garry Dobson) from USAT. Garry was a tremendous help and answered any questions I had and if he didn't know he found the answer and call me back.

 

Thanks... just curious what they charged to install stuff. And the price for stock GPS for the CF-30...

 

It's the standard out-of-warranty fee just for the install no matter who supplies the parts. Chances are, it was me who installed it. I do the majority of the retrofits and request of the others that if they get any in they give 'em to me. The exception is a massive order for a company.

 

NEED SOME HELP! I copied my 80 GB hard drive to a 200 GB hard drive using Norton Ghost 14.0 and it is not loading. All I got was the cursor flashing. I then restarted it and went into the bios and it showed the 200 GB hard drive but it still won't boot. What did I do wrong or what did I not do.

 

You may have gotten some sort of error when you copied it. I would retry the copy... If the error happens again I would try Acronis True Image. They give you full operational control of the software for 15 days... After that you'll need to pay them. Set it to automatic and it will be finished in 20 minutes or less. Free download!