How to: Install Hard Drive in Laptops

First, obviously, turn off your laptop.

Tools you need to install hard drive in laptop

All you need is a small Phillips screwdriver to install hard drive. Turn your laptop upside down. Remove the screws that secure the drive, take off the cover and take the drive out of its compartment. Snap in your new drive, close the cover and replace the screws... done.

Now, different laptops use different options to secure a hard drive in the compartment. Sometimes, it'll be two screws; sometimes one screw only or one screw and a sliding lock.

Look at the bottom of this laptop: the hard drive compartment is located to the top right corner of the laptop, there are two screws to be removed.

Install hard drive - 1

The location of the hard drive differs from laptop to laptop. The bottom of your laptop may not look like the one on this picture. Another compartment that also uses screws to secure its inside under a cover would be your memory compartment. But this one will usually have a square or very close to a square shape. So, go for the rectangular shaped cover to replace your hard drive.

Some extra steps to install hard drive

In some laptop models, hard drives are attached to a small tray with 4 screws. If that's the case, you will need to remove the 4 screws that secure the tray, remove the tray from the old hard drive and attach it to the new hard drive with the same 4 screws.

Once the new drive is in the rack, slide the rack back into the compartment, replace the cover and secure it with the screws. Done.

Install Hard Drive - 2

Final Steps to install hard drive

Now turn the power on... What happens next depends on whether you cloned the old drive to the new one or not:
- if you chose to clone hard drive than your new drive has Windows already loaded and your laptop should automatically detect it and boot of it as it booted of your old drive.
- if you didn't than since you new drive is empty not much will happen. If you have a Windows XP disk than insert it into the CD ROM drive and boot off that. Otherwise insert your Windows bootable diskette into the floppy drive to boot. The bootable diskette will recognize your new drive and it'll give you the option to format your new hard drive. Then, you'll insert your Windows CD to proceed with the Windows installation program that will do the rest.