Western Digital Scorpio Blue 160GB EIDE 8MB Cache 2.5 inch Internal Hard Drive OEM

I bought this as a direct replacement/upgrade for the 40Gb WD HD in my wife's Dell laptop. It's only been in a few weeks, but as this is the most vulnerable time it seems that it will work OK. It is very quiet and fast, so no operational problems, and it's a relief to have more space when we are trying to edit video.

Bought this to replace an OEM Fujitsu 60gb from my old Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop. Very easy to install, Couple of screws and replace the dell IDE adapter onto the new drive, slide back in and you're away. Works fine with Windows 7. Made an image of my old system with TrueImage onto an external USB drive before swapping the drives and restoring the image onto the WD. Bought the IOMAX HD enclosure to house the old 60gb to use as a handy passport drive. Happy with my new drive.

Now, to begin with I'm not a techie type, but I saw a demonstration of the CMS transfer kit on You-Tube: CMS Data & Operating System transfer Kit for PATA/SATA Notebook Drivesit looked straightforward so decided to give it a go. I'm upgrading a Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop with 60G hard drive, purchased in Feb 2006. First, I checked the PC spec on the Dell website by entering the service tag - the disk spec wasn't helpful, but I saw that the controllers were Intel IDE/ATA so I knew that I needed an ATA (or PATA) replacement. I thought that this Western Digital Scorpio drive was great value and was received amazingly well-packaged from Amazon, so don't worry on that score. In the CMS Data Transfer kit you get an aluminium enclosure, USB to mini-USB cable, USB to 9 volt cable (in case your PC can't supply enough power via the normal USB - I didn't need this), Data Transfer (also called BounceBack) software and even a screwdriver. The circuit board inside the enclosure is cleverly designed to take a SATA drive at one end (short, wide connector block) and an ATA drive at the other. (longer, narrow connector) You need to use controlled force to push the drive into the ATA connector, but just support the drive and block and push until the pins disappear into the block. One thing that the instructions don't tell you is that there are two "spare" pins which don't connect. Once you have the drive properly pushed home, it should sit on the board with the rubber edge of the SATA connector flush against the drive case end - if it doesn't, the drive/board unit won't go back into the enclosure. Next, slide the whole unit back into the enclosure and secure with two screws (CMS supply three screws - I assume one is a spare) then connect to the PC using the USB - mini USB lead. Put the Data Transfer disk into the CD/DVD drive - the software uses .NET, so if required, installs a version first. Then, you just enter the security code, click a few buttons, accept the default partitions suggested, (what do I know ?) go away and return a couple of hours later! BounceBack completes with a reboot and uninstalls itself from your "old" drive. Eject the new drive from Windows and remove from the enclosure, ready to install in the PC.
Now, a nerve-wracking event for a non-techie(!) - turn over the PC, remove the battery, earth any static charges on you or your equipment and take out the two screws marked with the "disk" symbol. Using your fingernails, slide the drive tray out from the side, remove two retaining screws (one each side) and the drive is released.
My heart sank immediately when I compared the two drives - the old Seagate drive pins were closer to the internal end of the tray than the new drive would be. I noticed that the Seagate pins were more in the form of a connector block, and was able to remove this "extension" piece and fit it to the new drive. Screwed into the tray, reinstalled and yes, it works!

A few application issues encountered: first, Outlook could not find "Outlook.pst": instead of looking for it, I let Outlook create a new, empty file, but turns out that this was all my emails, contacts etc.! No problem though - put the old drive into the enclosure, connect up and copy the file. Also, Excel wanted a .CAB file that wasn't even on the old drive, so I got that from the original Office CD supplied by Dell.

Overall, transfer kit and drive are superb pieces of kit and I'm very pleased with my 100+GB of free space plus useful external 60GB drive for under £90.