Home Laptop Hardware Laptop Hard Drives Everything You Need to Know About Laptop Hard Drives
Everything You Need to Know About Laptop Hard Drives PDF Print E-mail
Friday, 10 December 2010 18:31

 

Today’s laptop hard drives come with the same kinds of connections as desktop computer drives. It saves a lot of time and effort to connect laptop hard drive to desktop computer, which you might want to do to backup data or to reinstall Windows.
SATA standard is second step from older standard ATA. There was another standard PATA, which was designed for more storage capacity in older ATA hard drives.
The older ATA or PATA hard drives can be found on older laptops like IBM Lenovo T20, T21, T22, T23 with Pentium Solo core processor Centrino or Intel Pentium Mobile.
In the image below, an ATA laptop hard drive is shown.

 

 

 

 

 


Laptop hard drives. ATA laptop hard drive

ATA laptop hard drive


This is the Hitachi TravelStar 60 GB hard drive for laptops. This kind of hard drives, with an ATA connection, is usually found on older laptops with older standard screen (not widescreen). Hard drives with SATA connection found on newer laptops with widescreen. This is the easiest way to identify what type of hard drive you need, in case an upgrade or replacement is called for.


 SATA laptop hard drive


SATA means Serial Advanced Technology Attachment. Serial means the data through the cable is transferred by less cable serially. Being SATA, these hard drives are speedier than PATA. The latest SATA devices can achieve speed up to 6 GB/s. There are also a few generations of SATA devices. The first generation or SATA Revision 1.0 achieves speed up to 1.5 GB/s. The second SATA revision 2.0 goes to speeds up to 3 GB/s. The SATA revision 3.0 is up to 6 GB/s. The third SATA revision is usally called SATA 6 GB/s to avoid misunderstanding.
How to Identify and Replace Laptop Hard Drive
Identify the right type of hard drive connection in the laptop is explained above. This is simple because almost all laptops with widescreen have a SATA hard drive. The drive’s capacity is usually printed on the label attached on laptop’s plastic casing. SATA hard drives may have capacities from 80 GB to 500 GB or even more. PATA or ATA hard disk drives usually are up to 160 GB in capacity.
Laptop hard drives are usually located in the special compartments in the laptop casing. Sometimes, this compartment is dedicated only to the hard drive; sometimes there is a big compartment and the hard disk shares the place with memory and other devices.


 laptop hard drive compartment
To open this hard drive compartment you need to unscrew one or two screws and open the lid. There will be two or more screws depending on the laptop model. Just unscrew them and slide the hard disk sideways to get it out. Identify the hard disk interface type by using the following steps mentioned.
To test a hard drive without removing it from the laptop, follow this link. You will find step by step guide on how this should be done.
To recover data from your laptop without starting Windows, follow this link to get a step by step guide.

Last Updated on Sunday, 27 November 2011 16:09