Installing Hitachi 7200PM into an FS790

I ordered an FS790 last night with a 2.0GHz Pentium M, 512MB single stick of RAM, and a 40GB hard drive. I plan to have a new hard drive (Hitachi 7200RPM) and faster RAM here by the time the computer arrives. The 4200RPM drive isn't up to par. I plan on buying an eternal enclosure and putting the original drive from Sony in it once I've swapped them out. Would it be possible to put the Hitachi in the external enclosure and use Norton Ghost to copy a drive image of the OEM drive onto it then swap the two drives out and format the original? I'd like to still be able to use the hot keys, and I dont want to have to reinstall windows from scratch. Also, will i be taking the computer apart or is there a bay on the bottom to access the hard drive?

 

I would just use the recovery disks that came with your system. It'll still install into the knew drive, after that is done, you can set up the external and transfer your files over and that wipe out that old drive.

 

So I can install Windows from the recovery disks straight onto the new drive? I didn't think that would work because the recovery disks will only work with the hard drive they were made from. I know that's how the new Dells are since they've stopped including a backup CD.

 

That's because they were putting th recovery information on a partition of the hard disk. Very lame on their part. And yes, you can use the recovery CD on any hard drive you shove into your system.