Upgrading to a larger Harddrive?

[aychexsee]

I'm trying to upgrade to a larger harddrive for my HP Pavilion dv6448se from an 80gb to a 500gb.

What kind of harddrive do I need, specifically? I bought one from Western Digital and it doesn't have the right connectors. 😞

Can anyone help me?

[Huffer]

You need a SATA hard drive...likely what you have. You have to take the old hard drive out of the caddy and remove the plastic connector bar that goes over the SATA connectors on the bare drive.

[aychexsee]

The one I bought is a Western Digital 500gb WD5000BEVT

Will it work?

[Huffer · Accepted solution]

Yep. That's a SATA hard drive. Here is the Manual showing hard drive replacement. As I said the old hard drive is in a metal sled. There are 4 screws, one at each corner of the drive. Remove them, remove the bare drive from the sled and remove the connector bar from the connection end of the old drive and voila you will see connectors just like on the new drive.Put the connector on the new drive, bolt the new drive back in the sled and you can pout the whole thing back in the computer.

Drive Manual

The Manual does not really show the last critical steps of replacing the new drive for the old in the caddy before puttting the whole assembly including connector bar back in the computer.

[aychexsee]

Thank you thank you thank you thank you!!!!!

You are my hero! So glad I didn't end up wasting all that money on the new harddrive!!!

[sokysatom]

I too have recently purchased a western digital 500gb sata internal hard drive (WD5000BEVT).  I followed the instructions as per your link, to replace the hard drive, but the connectors on the new hard drive do not connect to the laptop. 

What do you mean by "remove the plastic connector bar that goes over the SATA connectors on the bare drive".  Is this on the new hard drive?  How do I do that, as the plastic bar looks pretty permanent.

[Huffer]

The connector bar is on the old drive in the caddy. It is a plastic piece that has female ports that accept the male SATA plugs on one side and then a different connection interface proprietary to HP on the other. Look at a new, bare drive and look at the old HP drive in the caddy. The thing that makes the HP drive different is what has to be removed.

This is what the connector looks like. The bottom part goes over the SATA connectors.

[lakdant]

I too want to upgrade my HDD...

But my system says that the Hard Disk supports "Protect Smart" And it does actually work (the HDD light becomes amber when I shake the Notebook while HDD is turning 🙂

I just need to know whether the feature is someting in the mother board or is it builtin to the HDD??

because If I change the HDD I'd lose that feature if it's in the HDD

Tnx

[Huffer]

HP Protectsmart is an acclerometer device external to the drive. In other words, any SATA hard drive should work with a Protectsmart device.

more info

[lakdant]

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@Huffer wrote:

HP Protectsmart is an acclerometer device external to the drive. In other words, any SATA hard drive should work with a Protectsmart device.

more info

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tnx for your quick response, really appreciate it!