Upgrading a used laptops hard drive is very easy. Laptop hard drives are almost always easy to access and the whole process should only take a few minutes.

The first step is to locate where your laptops hard drive is. Every laptop I’ve ever seen has the hard drive accessible from the bottom, so unplug and flip your laptop over. Just as a precaution take your laptops battery out during the hard drive upgrade procedure.

Somewhere on the bottom there should be a cover secured by a screw. In the picture below, you can see that the hard drive caddy is actually on the side of the laptop.

The hard drive caddy is on the side of this laptop but the screw is on the bottom in the center of the red circle.

In the above example, the hard drive caddy simply slides out. In some laptops, you will have to remove the cover and slide the hard drive caddy a little to unplug it, then lift the drive out of the laptop chassis.

There you can see the caddy unscrewed and ready to be removed.

A laptop hard drive caddy is simply a mounting bracket and interface for mobile hard drives. The hard drive is actually screwed into the caddy and can be easily removed. When you’re upgrading, you simply remove the old hard drive from the caddy (keeping track of the screws) and then put the new drive in.

The top side of the caddy.

The next photo shows the hard drive in the caddy from the other side. The screws holding the hard drive in, are along the sides. Simply remove them and slide the old hard drive out.

Here’s the Hitachi drive fitted to the Dell 8500.

Once the new hard drive is in the laptop, you’re ready to format the new drive and install Windows XP. Brand new hard drives need to be formatted, so insert the Windows XP CD into the CD ROM drive and boot of that. During the installation, you’ll be asked to format the drive and things will proceed smoothly.

What to do with your used laptop hard drive

Since you’ll have a spare laptop hard drive after you upgrade, a good idea is to get a cheap 2.5″ laptop hard drive external USB case. That way you can access all your old files and you’ll have a handy portable storage solution.

You simply have to open the case and pop your old drive in. These cases are cheap at around $10-$20.

I’ve found my external USB hard drive case very handy. They are small and since a laptop hard drive is used, much more resistant to shocks. They are also much faster and easier than using a CD writer to transport large files. Another bonus is that the case is powered off the USB port so you don’t need an external power source.