Well, I used TI9 yesterday for the first time...

...to transfer everything from my laptop's 20g drive to a new 120g drive and it worked as advertised. However, HP in all of its wisdom, makes the drive totally inaccessible to the user so I am back where I started. On the other hand, my newer Toshiba has a small panel that covers the drive and it is easily removed. Unfortunately, the Toshiba drive is ATA and my replacement drive is EIDE; another plan torpedoed.

Later Gator,
Dave

 

On my Compaq Presario Laptop the hard drive caddy is held in place with one screw. What model HP laptop do you have?

 

It is a "hp pavilion n5425 notebook pc" according to the sticker on the front.

 

As far as I know ATA, Pata, and Eide are the same, unless you mean Sata, then that is different.

 

The EIDE drive has two rows of pins while the ATA uses an edge-card connection.

 

J. S. Bach,
The article below might be what you need. It looks like there are 6 screws and it might take you 10 minutes to do if this is how your computer is setup. If you do not think you can do have a friend do it. I also agree w/ you that HP screwed up w/ this HD placement.

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?objectID=tis02342

 

Thank you, CM; that appears to be just what I can use. Actually, I got as far as the fourth step but I was afraid of breaking that plastic piece as I didn't want to apply too much force. All of this took place after removing every other visible screw on the bottom. I will try this tomorrow; it is late and I am tired; again, thank you.

 

Make sure that edge card connection is not just an adapter on the two rows of pins. I've seen some laptop drives like that. In fact I think Dell has that feature.

 

Yes it does. Confused me when I first saw it.

 

IT Worked!! I am now using the new hard drive. A big THANK YOU to CarolinaMike for the link; it took less than fifteen minutes to do the job.

 

I checked the Toshiba and the edge-card socket is soldered directly to a circuit board; no adapters are used.

 

The socket will be .... but the part on the hard drive is where the adapter will be if there is one - it may look at first glance to be part of the hard drive. Anyway glad you got things sorted out.