Upgrade hard drive in Dell latitude d505

[ISU2010]

The 40gb hard drive on my Dell Latitude d505 just recently broke and I thought I would save the laptop by replacing the hard drive with a new one and loading on the new windows 7 OS. Is there anything i need to know before i start this "renovation" of my old laptop? I am not very experienced with doing stuff like this so i was wondering how easy it is to just swap the hard drives and load on a brand new operation system.

Thanks

 

[jsphdickens@gma]

If you want a larger hard drive, you will have to contact dell to see if there is one that will work with your d505. A replacement one of the same size shouldn't be to hard to come across.

The biggest problem I see is that your machine only has 256MB of RAM. While your processor meets the minimum requirements for windows 7, you will need at least 1GB of RAM, and even then I'm not sure you won't be regretting leaving XP.

Looking at the specs of your machine, i'm not sure if I would put Windows 7 on it, but if you decide too, the hard drive is a basic swap. You will need the a physical DVD of windows 7 (not upgrade version). Then it is just a matter of booting from a disc and following the on screen instructions.

 

[ISU2010]

I have already upgraded to 1gb of memory a few years ago, but other than that thank you for your help and hopefully everything goes well.

One last question...i know it is probably not worth it but how hard would it be to upgrade the graphics card? I know that this would probably be an ambitious task for me...but this is my old laptop and i can afford to "practice" on it.

 

[emiliecathey]

I have 1.5 GB of RAM and i am trying to upgrade the HD to 320 instead of 40; when I try to load os on the new hd; i can't complete the installation; it goes to blank screen. Any ideas?