Solved Replace hard drive in HP Laptop without install discs

[danter]

I am trying to help out a family member. Her little used laptop (now 8 years old) slowed down to a crawl.
After trying all software solutions (repair, restore etc), I ran HD Tune which showed the heard drive was failing (plus the fact at idle the drive starts spinning furiously for a few seconds every couple of minutes).

I have taken an image of the drive onto an external hard drive using Macrium. As it is an HP Pavillion (dv6404tu) and came only with the system restore on the hard drive and no op sys disk, can I install a new drive, make a bootable CD and boot from this and then transfer the image onto the new drive? And is it that simple?

Also, as a new 120gb drive for this model will run approx $125, a SSD makes more financail/performance sense, only from what I have read, am I correct in that I can't use a SSD with this older laptop?

Thanks in advance.

HP Pavillion dv6404tu with Vista 32bit

 

[Cr00zng]

The chances are that yes, it is that simple.

On my old Dell laptop with Vista, that's how the system had been transferred to an SSD. The difference was that I've used USB not CD boot disk. The imaging with Macruim did not impact licensing of the OS and applications, they are working just fine. Vista is SSD aware and will adjust the boot sector size for the best SSD performance.

The wild card is how HP handles licenses for the new hard drive, be that HDD or SSD? They may do it differently than Dell, but I doubt it...

 

[DeaconFrost]

The only issue you will encounter is one you can answer yourself easily by removing the HDD in the old laptop. If it's an SATA drive, you can replace it with an SSD. If it's an IDE drive, then you'll need an old, and likely expensive IDE drive.

 

[Cr00zng]

True, but...

The HP DV6000 series laptops had AMD CPUs with SATA ports for the internal drive, if I am not mistaken...

 

[danter]

The drive is a Fujitsu MHW2120BH. 120gb SATA (1 I think - not SATA II). It is a simple 'push down' connection - no cables.
I read elsewhere that because it was SATA 1, I would have issues with a SSD. WOuld this be becasue I would need some sort of adaptor to connect and then figure how to secure a different sized drive? - or the laptop will not be compatible with SSD?

The direct replacement drive sounds easiest - she will not be doing anything to oush the drive regardless.

 

[danter]

Also, assuming I have installed the compatible SATA drive, booted up via disk or USB, am I correct to also assume I would need to use DOS commands to transfer the saved image to the new drive?

 

[Cr00zng]

The later SATA versions are backward compatible to older versions, both the interface and form factor. You won't need an adapter to connect a SATA II or III drive to the SATA I interface.

The free version of Macrium recovery CD/USB is based on Linux and does give you a graphical interface. You can use command line, or DOS commands to restore the image, if that's what you're looking for.

The speed of the SSD will be capped by the SATA I laptop support; the sequential read/write will be around 130 MB/s, but you still get the full benefit of random read/write speed and the low latency. The SSD is noticeably faster than the HDD.

Is it possible that the SSD drive will not work with the HP laptop? Yes, it is. OEMs tend to limit what they support and may "white list" components that can be installed in their system. The wifi card limitation for HP laptops is explained here for example:

http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/293403-beware-dreaded-white-list-hp-guilty-charged.html

I am not aware that HP is doing the same for disk drives, but you won't know it until you try. If they do, it doesn't matter if the drive is SSD or HDD; if the drive is not on the white list, it won't work.

 

[danter]

Cheers for that. Think Ill just play it safe and install the direct replacement drive. It will never be put to task for anything demanding, so not worth the risk for SSD.

I will no doubt return here once I have the disk installed and fumble through the image transfer!

Thanks for all the help.

 

[Cr00zng]

Cheers for that. Think Ill just play it safe and install the direct replacement drive. It will never be put to task for anything demanding, so not worth the risk for SSD.

I will no doubt return here once I have the disk installed and fumble through the image transfer!

Thanks for all the help.

You're welcome, please mark this post as resolved...