The Easy Way to Replace a Dying Notebook Hard Drive : Introduction: Hopelessly Dreaming Of RAID
- 1. Introduction: Hopelessly Dreaming Of RAID
- 2. Let The Operation Begin
- 3. Keep On Backin' Up 1
- 4. Keep On Backin' Up 2
- 5. Apricorn Time Or Let The Clone Wars Begin
- 6. Step 1
1. Introduction: Hopelessly Dreaming Of RAID
See the companion article: Avoiding the Heartbreak of Notebook Hard Drive Failure.
I used Apricorn's EZ Upgrade 2.5" Kit to replace a failing hard disk drive in my notebook computer. This is a Parallel ATA (PATA) kit. Apricorn also makes upgrade kits for Serial ATA (SATA) drives. Apricorn kits support 2.5" drives, though you might find a way to get them to support physically larger drives.
Maybe it's talent, maybe it's just luck, but it's a basic fact of the universe that I'm pretty good at breaking electronics - especially hard disks. My track record is one or more dead hard drives per year. So, I've been thinking a lot lately about the rise of redundant disk drives in notebook computers, especially those in Alienware notebooks. RAID 0 buys no redundancy, but can drastically increase performance because data are placed on the disks to optimize access. With RAID 1, in the true spirit of redundancy, one drive constantly backs up the other. So, as long as a glitch in the first drive doesn't get backed up to the other drive, in case of a failure you can just replace the bad drive with a good one and use the other one to boot on. Once you've rebooted everything on the functioning drive is backed up to the newly replaced drive.
My notebook is a mobile electronic slug, leading me to weep as I witness my typing slowly catching up to the CPU. That's enough to make anyone start dreaming about those Alienware RAID 1 behemoths. But when the hard disk in my notebook started making rattling noises and my special hard disk failure powers started alerting me to my next HDD failure, my desire for RAID 1 or higher grew to a passion.
Alas, RAID isn't within my budget right now. And, I'm not about to buy a fast notebook replacement, because, well, despite my notebook's general sluggishness, I'm a little bit attached to it. OK, I lied, I'd love to have a better notebook but like most of us, right now that old devil budget rears its ugly head again.
So, I'm going to have to replace that dying drive. And, I must tell you, I look forward to it far less than visting the dentist to get a cavity filled.
- Next page Let The Operation Begin
