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Topic: Laptops

Upgrade your laptop or Mac Mini storage with the OWC DIY Hard Drive Kit

Summary: The thought of upgrading a desktop's hard drive is daunting enough for some users, but swapping out a drive in a laptop is potentially even more intimidating, given the narrow confines in which you need to work. OWC hopes to make the task a bit easier with its new DIY Hard Drive Kit, which gives you everything you need to upgrade your PC or Mac laptop and even a Mac Mini desktop.

Sean Portnoy

By for Laptops & Desktops |

The thought of upgrading a desktop's hard drive is daunting enough for some users, but swapping out a drive in a laptop is potentially even more intimidating, given the narrow confines in which you need to work. OWC hopes to make the task a bit easier with its new DIY Hard Drive Kit, which gives you everything you need to upgrade your PC or Mac laptop and even a Mac Mini desktop.

All kits come with your choice of drive, including a solid state drive option, as well as a five-piece toolkit, a cable to transfer data between your old and new drives, and even an external enclosure to stick the old drive in for reuse as additional storage (including an option for an enclosure that supports FireWire. OWC also has how-to videos on its Website to help the install process and provides 24/7 tech support. For select configurations, the company throws in a suite of backup and disk-utility software.

There are scores of possible configurations to choose from, ranging from a 250GB 5,400 rpm hard drive for $57.99 to a 240GB SSD for $584.99. In between there are 500GB and 1TB hard drives options at 5,400 or 7,200rpm, along with 60GB or 120GB SSDs. While OWC is best known as a third-party peripheral and component provider for Macs, these drives, of course, will also work in PCs.

Topics: Laptops, Apple, Hardware, Mobility, Storage

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  • RE: Upgrade your laptop or Mac Mini storage with the OWC DIY Hard Drive Kit

    In the case of laptops, you could choose laptops which make the upgrade process easier.<br><br>Over the years, I've been lucky to get laptops with very well designed HD chassis. In my old Compaq 2405, the hard drive is in a sled that just pulls out. You undo four screws on the sled, swap drives, put the screws back in and snap it back in. Literally impossible to make an error.<br><br>My Toshiba M700 also has a sled, although you have to disconnect and reconnect a cable<br><br>Even my Gigabyte M1028 netbook has an easy access/easy swap hard drive bay.
    TheWerewolf
    Reply Vote

    • RE: Upgrade your laptop or Mac Mini storage with the OWC DIY Hard Drive Kit

      @TheWerewolf ditto with my Dell Inspiron. The hardest part is copying all the data from the old drive to the new. The hardware installation is a breeze that only takes a few minutes.
      Al_nyc
      Reply Vote

  • I have done this not once

    but at least 3 times. Most laptops have easily serviceable hard drives. The only exception that I have found was my first Mac Book Pro (circa 2006). That one required a great deal of care as it was designed by Apple to be completely unserviceable by end users (way to go Apple NOT!).

    My unibody MBP is very easy to upgrade and Apple even provides instructions for the same. I partition copied my dual boot 320GB drive to a new 500GB drive to increase the storage for OS-X (needed by my Win 7 VM). After copying the drive and installing it, I found that any change to partition mapping completely hosed the BootCamp Win XP machine even if it did not involve the XP partition.

    As a last resort, I downloaded the VMware vCenter Converter and sucked the XP Pro partition into a stand alone VM and hammered that partition (and the EFI boot partition needed by BootCamp) and gave the whole disk to OS-X.

    Now all Windows computing is done in virtual machines with a shared folder for all 3 OSes to use for data files. For me it works great!
    jacarter3
    Reply Vote

    • BTW Other World Computing - OWC

      is perhaps the best source for portable drive enclosures including ATA, SATA drives at 3.5 or 2.5 inches. I always buy the ones with at least FW800 and USB2.0. For 3.5 inch drives I get eSATA connectivity as well.

      Another must have item for any DIY inclined user is the Newer Technology USB 2.0 Universal Drive Adapter from OWC. Ever wonder what's on the old drive or need data from a retired drive? This drive adapter is perfect for temporarily connecting a bare drive without needing to tear down your computer. It was probaly the best $29 I ever spent.

      For the buying the actual drive, I usually go to Newegg.com for a better selection. OWC has a lot of choices but Newegg seems to have more and slightly better prices. As for returns and customer service, I can't comment as I have never needed it but Newegg does have several bad reviews of the customer service on their own site.
      jacarter3
      Reply Vote

  • RE: Upgrade your laptop or Mac Mini storage with the OWC DIY Hard Drive Kit

    OWC is the best!
    john_gillespie@...
    Reply Vote

  • RE: Upgrade your laptop or Mac Mini storage with the OWC DIY Hard Drive Kit

    Also look at www.Powerbookmedic.com
    john_gillespie@...
    Reply Vote

  • RE: Upgrade your laptop or Mac Mini storage with the OWC DIY Hard Drive Kit

    In my experience upgrading or replacing a laptop hard drive is not all that hard... I replaced them in several Dells and HP model laptops in less than 2 minutes. It's cool that there is a DIY kit for those who are not as savvy or experienced with hardware replacement.
    athynz
    Reply Vote
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