Hello,
I have an Acer Aspire 3000 laptop which is about 3 years old. It has a very small 60 gig hard drive which I want to change for a 160gig Segate IDE hard drive. I obviously realise that I need to transfer all my files and Operating System from the old drive to the new one. I have some idea on what I need to do to change the hard drives.
What I need to know is, Does anyone have any experience with changeing a hard drive in a laptop and where would the hard drive be located in my computer, also any suggestions as to how I should transfer my files and OS over, I do have a portable hard drive which I would use, but would like any other suggestions as to how I could transfer them.
My OS is Windows XP home. I have already upgraded the ram , so I do have some idea as to change the Hard Drive
I look forward to any feed back and thank you in advance.

   Most laptops have an access panel held on by screws that can be removed to get to the harddrive.
   Transferring the files can be done using the external drive but the system files will not be able to be moved that way.  You will probably have to install Windows on the new drive and any programs that you had installed.  Then copy the data files that you need from the external drive.

You could clone the hard drive and avoid installing windows, but that would involve buying appropriate software.

  I had thought about that too, but he only has one drive.  He could clone the drive to the external drive, but then when he removed the old drive and put in the new drive, he would not have a way to get the clone from the external drive.
   Some clone software have boot CDs that can be used.  In that case, cloning would work, but without that, I don't know how the cloning would be successful.

The image backup programs such as Acronis will clone the disc/drive by duplicating an image of all its partitions on a new drive as long as the new drive is larger than the base drive. The clone hard drive will be bootable and identical (except for size) to the original base drive. This allows one to clone, replace and boot with no issues. I've done it a few times as I have upgraded my system.in fact at one point I made a disk image of the drive and then successfully copied the image from a single drive onto a raid 0 setup with no problems.

   I was thinking that since it was in a laptop and it only has one drive, that there would not be a way to hook up two drives at one time.  I know desktops have extra cables but I didn't think laptops did.  I have not spent much time inside of a laptop and fortunately have not had to replace any drives in my laptops, so I do not know.

Ray, you are right about the single drive problem with a laptop. I know that Acronis allows you to create a drive image onto CD/DVDs, it also has a special boot disk that will transfer the drive image from the DVDs onto the new drive. It's a little cumbersome but fairly effective.

Depending on the size of your 'external hard drive' you could clone your 60 Gb drive to it, using Norton Ghost (it doesn't have to be the newest version, look on e-bay or amazon.co for a cheap older version). Ghost allows you to burn a start-up CD, do it. Put your new hard drive in your laptop (look for a 4.5" by 3" panel on the underside). Now hook up your external hard drive first and then start-up from the CD you burned. Ghost will guide you through the process of loading the cloned image from your external hard drive to your new internal hard drive and you're done.
Alternatively, if you can't use your external hard drive for this operation, have a look here: http://spotmau.com/products/package/full.htm
You would also need a 2.5 inch hard drive case ($15 to $30 on amazon.com or compusa.com), which comes with a USB connection cable. Mount your new drive in the case (very simple). Then use the Spotmau software to clone your present hard drive directly to your new drive, take it out of the case, put it in your laptop, start up normally from the new drive and you're done. The advantage is that you can put your old drive in the case and use it for backups, very useful.
I used both methods, they both work and you don't need any technical skills or advanced computer knowledge for either ...

Thanks Guys!! I'm not into this right now but it's a very neat piece of Info to file away for later. I'm using Acronus right now, for back-ups, and find it very good and easy to use. Haven't used Norton Ghost but have a copy.

Onemaddude