2.5" hard drives, laptop hard drives, 2.5" ide hdd, upgrades for laptops, 2.5 inch hard disks

One of the most frequently asked questions we are asked is whether a particular laptop hard disk drive that we sell fits or is compatible with a certain laptop

We have composed a list of tips in order to help you choose the right item as summarised below:

1) Check whether the hard drive your current laptop uses has an ide (also known as pata,ata, udma, p-ata and e-ide) or a sata (serial ata or s-ata) connector. This can be done in a variety of ways, firstly you can type in the model number or part number (p/n) of your current hard drive into a search engine and then this will tell you what type of connector it uses. Each manufacturer of hard drives have a unique combination of letters and numbers which forms the model number.

The main manufacturers have model numbers beginning with the following two letters:

HT/IC/DK (Hitachi and IBM)

WD (Western Digital)

ST (Seagate)

MH ( Fujitsu)

MK (Toshiba)

MP (Samsung)

Secondly, you could type in the model number of your laptop into a search engine to check the specification and that will also enable you to determine what type of 2.5" laptop hard drive you need.

If you are intending on upgrading your laptop hard drive to a larger one then the general rule is that any brand and any model will be compatible with your laptop so long as you purchase the right type of 2.5" hard drive. The only real exception to this rule is if you are intending to upgrade an ide hard drive from a very small capacity to a very large one as the bios on your laptop may not detect the hard drive (e.g 20gb to 120gb, 160gb or 250gb) since the hard drive was most likely to have been manufactured after the laptop was. The rule doesn't appear to affect laptops that use a SATA hard drive though so you may upgrade to whatever size you choose.

If you wish to transfer all your data including your operating system, files, drivers and settings from the current hard drive you're using with your laptop to your new one then there are various programs that enable you to do this very effectively. You may however require additional hardware in order to do this but please contact us if you wish to do this and we can recommend a list of options to you.