OT question on laptop hardware

[chy at genuity.com (Chuck Young)]

Jerry,

My experience is there is a way to remove a "cradled HDD assy", either with screws (like a T-6) or by removing the battery and
pressing an "ejector" button or somesuch bizarre maneuver.  If these fail, rtfm.

Once the assy is out, you'll need to unscrew the drive from the cradle and then you will likely encounter a printed circuit board
made form copper and flexible plastic which interfaces from a standard notebook IDE drive (44 pins?) to a proprietary compaq
physical connector, which adheres to the drive body with an adhesive "duct tape" type of glue.

With a blow dryer, heat the adhesive until it becomes workable and carefully peel it off the HDD.  Pop it on the new one and reverse
the disassembly process to reinstall.  You may need to upgrade BIOS to see the new drive.

HTH,

---------------
Chuck Young
Security Consulting
Genuity E-Services
--------------------

> Jerry Feldman
> The problem is that unlike my
> other laptop, the HD is buried inside the unit. With my other drive, the
> hard drive was easy to replace (a couple of screws and it would slide out).
> I don't want to start taking it apart without some advice. I suspect that
> most of the standard laptop hard drives would fit right in. `