panasonic cf-19 mk 2 replacing 80gb hard drive with 500gb

hi all new to this forum and certainly not a computer expert
wondering what the procedure is to replace my hitachi 80gb ata hard drive device with a 500gb compatible device in order to gain better performance already have 4 gb ram memory installed
I assume it is not as easy as it seems, Im running vista business and would again assume i would have to re install this
any help would be appreciated

 

Welcome to the Panasonic Toughbook Forum

It's not really hard at all if you have an external CD-Rom and the restore disk....which is an image of HDD when it left the factory. If you are looking for better performance then you should be looking at a SSD instead and even W7 for an OS. I find the bigger the drive the slower the laptop gets.

 

Easiest way is to get some drive cloning software. Put the 500gb drive in a USB external drive case and clone the 80gb to the 500gb. Then shut machine off and install the 500gb drive.

 

I have used Acronis with good success to image what was already working well, and then restoring to another hard drive. You could image your existing system with a program such as Acronis, or you could purchase the factory image from Heartland (and/or elsewhere) for your exact system (Vista), and then put the new drive into your old caddy (or get another caddy) and then pop in the restore disk into an external hard drive and restore the new drive to factory specs. Here is a link to purchase the restore disk, new in wrapper: Panasonic Toughbook CF 19 MK3 Recovery CD DFQM8448MA 1GB Memory | eBay
Here's a link for price comparison for a 500 GB hard drive in caddy: 500GB Hard Drive Caddy Panasonic Toughbook CF 19 Laptop Recovery Restore Windows | eBay
Please report your results in this thread. We like to hear back from people looking to upgrade their systems. Best Regards, Cleve

 

That is the wrong disk..he has a MK2 and the one you posted is for a MK3. I am on my phone so it is hard to see