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On Mon, 1 Apr 1996, Murray Clarke wrote: > I have a Thinkpad 755CE and wish to upgrade the hard disk drive from 540 MB > to 1.2GB. The prices of these drives as quoted from IBM or a third party, > which include the (proprietary) caddy that houses the drive, are quite > expensive. It is my understanding, however, that the drive itself is a > standard 2.5" drive. I would like to know if anyone has had experience in > opening the plastic caddy that houses the drive and installing a 2.5" inch > drive of higher capacity. What sort of drives are recommended? Several people have done it. Most 2.5" drives are 19mm. You need a 12mm or 17mm drive to fit inside the caddy. This limits your choice of hard drives: I think only IBM makes the 17mm drives, and there are only a couple companies making 12mm drives > 1GB. Most 2.5" drives are 19mm. You may be able to get a 19mm drive to fit if you do without the caddy, but that'll expose the hard drive electronics every time you swap the battery. Don Whiteside had a good description of the procedure on his old web page (RIP). Lift up the corners of the ///////// label and undo the two screws there. Take care to catch the nuts that fall out the other side when you do this. Use a jewler's screwdriver to pry apart the side of the caddy: Loosen all the snaps on the side, then gently pry it apart. This step will cause you no end of frustration until you have it apart and get a good look at how the whole thing works. Once it's open, make note of exactly which pins the connector mates with on the hard drive (there's an extra column of pins, sometimes covered by a jumper). Swap drives, put everything back together. If Don still has his instructions around, maybe he can post them. Another trick is to buy one of those cheap 170MB drives with caddy we've seen on closeout ($49 or so). Toss the 170 in the trash (or mail it to me :) and use the caddy for your new 1.2GB drive. -- John H. Kim "Just try telling the IRS you don't feel like jokim@mit.edu 'contributing' this year come April." -- Bob Dole jokim@tuna.mit.edu on Bill Clinton's avoidance of the word 'taxes'