Hard drive upgrading

brandonjb85 · #1 (**permalink**) 10-07-2010, 01:33 PM

Hello my wife has a acer aspire one 532h .I was wondering if I wanted to put a bigger hard drive in it what do I need ?

ericinboston · #2 (**permalink**) 10-07-2010, 02:14 PM

Well, I would have to look specifically at the tech specs for that model...but most laptops use 2.5" thick drives. Most.

But drive aside, you would still need to completely mirror your current drive to the new drive as you are swapping out the drives. That's not entirely simple.

What is the size of the drive now and how much more space does she need? What is she storing?

Would it be better to invest in a $75 external, portable, 1TB USB drive (no power cords!)? What about buying a 32GB USB Flash Key for about $70?...or a 64GB for about $120?

-Eric

ThisIsNot · #3 (**permalink**) 10-07-2010, 07:10 PM

Additionally, on top of the 2.5" size, you have to worry about different thicknesses for the drives. There are two different thickness measurements for hard drives. I think they are 9.5 mm and 12.5 mm. Most netbooks and notebooks rely on 2.5" 9.5 mm hard drives while thicker notebooks (such as gaming models) will sometimes put 12.5 mm drives in them.

Either way, you have multiple factors (aside from what Eric mentioned) to consider whether it be hard drive size, hard drive thickness, the power requirements for the hard drive, if your netbook has the appropriate internal connections (SATA, SATA II, ATA, IDE, etc.), how to actually install the hard drive in your netbook (which will likely require you to slightly disassemble it), and the cost of a small high capacity drive. You can easily spend $150 for something that will survive the portable environment (one of those "hybrid" drives). Is it worth $150 to upgrade a $300 netbook?