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Hard Drive swap?

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megisepic

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Ok, so this is a weird question. I have a Vaio PCG-7184L. About a year ago my hard drive crashed, but I've kept the computer with intentions of fixing it. In the mean time, I've been using my sister's PCG-7133L. While the outside of mine is in working condition, hers is missing 3 keys (1, i, n) and she at one point spilled root beer on the keyboard so the screen has this lovely watery-effect going on. That was sarcasm.

While I would really love to just buy a new hard drive, finances do not permit. That said, would it be possible to remove the hard drive from my sister's computer and install it in my old computer? If so, would it be possible to format the disk and reinstall the OS or would it not be worth the effort. If these things are possible, could you recommend a good how-to?

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Swapping the drives is almost certainly possible. All laptops built in the past 15 years have used 2.5" drives some 9mm thick, some 12mm, there were even fatter drives long ago. I don't know about Sony, but most other manufacturers made the laptops so that the drive could be accessed pretty easily by removing a couple of screws and pulling out a caddy which holds the drive. The model numbers you list look pretty similar and I suspect the two models have a number of interchangeable parts, the drive caddy is likely to be the same, if not, you would need to move the drive from the original caddy into the caddy of the second machine.

The BIOS may complain on the first power up unless the two drives are the identical model, most recent machines have BIOS code which will recognize the drive and read from it the appropriate values to make the settings in the firmware NVRAM so that future start-ups will not cause errors, you may need to accept some new settings for a modified drive type on the first start-up.

Another issue you may encounter if you are able to perform the swap is that the Windows drivers for the hardware in the machines could be different. When you first boot from the replacement drive you may be prompted for driver disks or asked to search the internet for appropriate drivers.

If you want to reinstall the OS clean, this is a very common operation which I have performed many times. Your best bet is to use Google to search for "reinstall windows XP" or similar search terms. You'll undoubtedly get a ton of hits and be able to find a good guide to walk you through the process. I suggest printing out any instructions you choose first unless you have yet a third computer to access the Internet with while you perform the install. You should also locate the original driver disk for the specific machine or go to the Sony support site and locate the section for your machine and download all of the driver you will need to install, copy them to a thumb drive for use after the build so you can get your hardware working.

There are a lot of things to consider to undertake these tasks, but with some preparation and study before you begin, you can do it!

You may find more help by checking out http://www.notebookforums.com and looking for the Sony section, there is a very active group of geeks over there who can help you with just about anything.

Most of the geeks around here are into Sony MiniDisc audio equipment, including myself!

Good luck!

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