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This article covers what you need to know to be able to go out and buy a new drive. First you need to decide if you are going for a ready housed drive or a naked, unhoused, one. This is dragons and butterflies territory but it is an important decision and will make all the difference later on so it is worth spending a little time on it.
It is best to assume that you will want to clone to this new drive and to be able to swap the drives if you have a disaster but also for testing, to make sure everything works as intended. Even if this isn't what you initially intend it enables you to change your mind later on.
The alternative is to settle for backing up only without the option to use this drive for swapping later on. The advantage of this choice is that you can use a drive that appeals to you on capacity and cost alone - a very much easier decision.
The assumption now has to be that you won't settle for less than a swappable cloned drive and for this you must ensure that the drive is suitable for swapping otherwise cloning to it will be a lost benefit (put simply).
For a drive to be swappable, in a laptop, it must have the same basic design as the existing laptop drive. Some of these features are easy to discern, physical size for example, but others present more of a problem. I will deal with one design feature at a time and explain a couple of snags to you and the best way to overcome them.
By Paul E. Coughlin
SaneThinking.com
27 May 2008
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