How to upgrade Toshiba Qosmio SATA hard drive
November 19, 2007 at 06:11:00 AM, by Kevin Gilbert
This guide looks at upgrading your SATA hard drive, showing the process on a Toshiba Qosmio F45.
Part 1
Is that 4200rpm drive slowing down your boot time? Music and videos taking up all your hard drive space? Replacing your hard drive with a faster, higher capacity model is pretty simple. It's the restoring' your contents of your previous hard drive that's hard for most people! With that being said, I'm going to walk you through the first step - and show you how to upgrade your SATA hard drive in the new Toshiba Qosmio F45-AV412 unit. It's really very simple!
Again, we have the Toshiba Qosmio F45 AV412. This laptop is just begging for a turbo charge with only a 4200rpm drive in there. Granted it is a spacious 250GB model, but it's rather slow. So upgrade we did!
We got the fastest, biggest SATA drive we could get our hands on - the Hitachi Travelstar 7200 200GB monster! If you are wondering about the performance of this beast - take a good read over to THIS section to find out just how much faster this hard drive is!
Tools Needed
There shouldn't be too many tools you need, of course, that all depends on how easy it is to access your hard drive. Some have pull outs, some have slide-pops (slide it in, then pop it down) It's all going to vary on how to get to your hard drive. For the Qosmio, all we needed is a small screwdriver, and of course the new hard drive.
After you have these tools sorted out, you're going to UNPLUG your laptop, and you NEED to remove the battery. We don't want you shocking yourself, or the fancy brand new hard drive you are going to put init would be such a waste of good technology! (Ok, we'd miss you too ;) )
So, after you removed your battery, it's time to locate where your laptop's hard drive bay is. Do you think you can spot it in this picture?
Maybe you can, maybe you can't, but I'm going to help you out. If in doubt, consult your laptops user manual - it should have it listed in there. For the Qosmio, the hard drive bay is the middle bay near the LCD latch. As pointed out here.
Now that we have found our bay, we need to access it. Grab a screwdriver that fits and remove the screw(s) until you can remove the plate.
Once that plate can be removed, do yourself a favor and set this plate somewhere SAFE! Preferably on a level surface so you don't lose the screw that was holding it in place.
With the plate removed, we now see the small sign of the hard drive!
There it is! Now we need to get it out! Most laptops have a small, thin flap that you can grab to pull it out, or at least pull up to slide out. This one is no exception. Here's a better view of the belt.'
This belt was tucked in beneath the drive - no sweat, it is easily accessible by flipping it up to get a good grip on with your hands. You don't have to use the screwdriver, I just used it so my stubby fingers weren't in the way and you could see it.
Part 2Removing the old Hard Drive
Now that we have the hard drive in view and the belt accessible, we can remove the hard drive. Don't be alarmed if it requires a little bit of gusto - but if you feel that it's requiring a lot more gusto than you thought, make sure you have removed all screws that MIGHT be holding it in place. Ours is ready to come out - so let's go ahead and do that.
Grab the flap, and give it a slight tug'.
POP! It is sliding right out now! Hooraybut wait, that doesn't look at ALL like the hard drive we want to installit's got a CAGE around it!
Never fear! This is what is called a Hard Drive caddy' - or cage - it's what holds and places your hard drive in the correct orientation to slide into the connectors on the inside.
So, I'll leave it up to your imagination from here on how to put it back together.
Just kidding! But you guessed it, we're going to need to take this hard drive out of the caddy, and put our new one in it.
If you notice from the side, there are 4 screws holding the hard drive in. In particular, there are 2 black and 2 silver screws. Pay attention to how these are put in - they are specific to one end of the drive. If you have all the same size/color - you won't need to bother. But for this particular one you need to pay attention to that.
The black screws are flat', while the silver ones are extruded' - meaning that the silver screws stick out more than the black. This is important to note.
Flip the hard drive around to view the part that slides in. Now, you can double check to make sure you have the right connectors with your new hard drive here. Make sure if you are replacing a SATA hard drive that the connectors look like this!
And inside your laptop, if you ever get disorientated which way it went it, should look like this. You should notice there are two separate sections of pins: one is larger and another is smaller. All you need to know for these purposes is that they obviously have to match up between the drive and laptop, but for further information the larger set of pins is the data connection and the smaller set provides power.
Part 3Removing Caddy, Replacing Hard drive
Here comes the gravy! We're now ready to remove the old hard drive from the caddy, and place in our brand spanking new one.
Remove the 4 screws, which are typical of most manufacturers' drive caddies, and in this case note which end of the drive they mounted to originally. Keep them in a safe place until you are ready to replace them.
Make a careful note however - sometimes there are more than just 4 screws holding it in there! Some hard drive caddy's have screws on the BOTTOM as well - an example from a different system is shown below, but does not affect our Toshiba.
Now that our screws are out - we need to get that hard drive out. You can give the caddy some VERY SLIGHT flex and if the drive is thin, it should pop right out - otherwise do the safer method and carefully slide the hard drive out. Careful! Don't drop it! It's still a good hard drive (unless, of course, you fried your system). You should find yourself with an empty caddy and 2 hard drives.
Great! Now, let's take a look at our hard drives and compare them.
The Hitachi 7K200 is on the RIGHT, and the Fujistu 250GB is on the LEFT. Notice how much smaller the Hitachi is? That's not a bad thing! It will just be that much easier to slide back into the caddy. Here's another look at comparing thickness - this time with the Hitachi on the LEFT and the Fujitsu on the RIGHT. Also, here's the triple check - make sure your connectors look the same!
Now we're going to go ahead and place the Hitachi back into our hard drive caddy.
You will notice in this picture that the screw holes should line up when you slide it into place. Make sure that they do. Also note that the label side (white) should be visible when you place it in the caddy.
Viola! It's in! Let's screw it back into place. Flat screws near the front' and silver extruded' screws to the rear.
Your finished product should look very similar to this (it depends on which hard drive you use). Notice that even thought the Hitachi drive was thinner than the Fujitsu - it doesn't matter since the hard drive caddy raises the connectors to the right height. That's what it's there for!
Part 4 Re-inserting the new Hard Drive
Now that our caddy has our new drive, and our screws are in the right place, we’re going to put the caddy back in its “home” and seal the laptop back up.
Place the caddy so it is viewed like this – and give it a gentle push in. If you feel that it doesn’t want to go in – don’t force it! You either have the hard drive upside down, or you probably have the silver screws and the flat black screws mixed up! See, I told you had to pay attention. If you did do it right however, it should slide easily into place.
Take the flap and tuck it back under the hard drive like you found it.
Now grab the plate and screw it back into place!
After you are sure that the plate is on securely, let’s go ahead and place the battery back into its slot so we can fire the laptop up!
Make sure to lock the battery bay again – as shown in the pictures!
And there you have it! Now all that’s left for you to do is install / backup your Operating system and you’re rocking and rolling with a faster hard drive! But wait, you’re not done with that old hard drive.
Remember that hard drives contain a lot of valuable data – more than you probably know. Even if you delete or format your data, it can still be recovered with relative ease. A good thing to do to a hard drive that you are sure you are never going to use ever again, is take a power drill or hammer to it. Give it a good drill or whack (safely!) and then dispose of the hard drive in the correct fashion at an electronics disposal place. If you plan on keeping the old hard drive around “just in case,” put it in the baggy the new hard drive came with and store it in a cool, dry place! If you plan on selling the old drive, make sure you use a proper data erasing program to write over every sector on that drive to thoroughly cleanse the drive of your private information.
Questions? Check out our forums and fire away!
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Comments
Ozgur at 02:39, August 11, 2010
I have Toshiba Qosmio too. An it has 2 Hdd drive. 1- fuhitsu 80 Gb 2- toshiba 120 gb windows installed on 1- fijutsi 80 gb. but my second disk toshiba 120 gb is not working now. and I changed it. but my new second disk not working. rather notebook doesnt see my new second HDD. notenbook is working normal. but without second disk. can you help me?
Mark Readman at 09:58, December 24, 2009
nice write up. I came across this site looking for a laptop with easily replaceable hard drives, harder to find info on that than you think!!! The Qosmio looks easy enough.
mkk at 20:39, February 28, 2009
VERY good writeup. I believe that one can buy an enclosure for the old HD and connect it to an USB or an eSATA port as an external drive.