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gateway ta6 laptop

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Shades:
As far as I know you bought the external enclosure and the hard disk that goes in it separately. That means it should be easy to open/close the external enclosure for you to add/replace the hard disk inside the enclosure.

The service manual for your laptop I linked to in a previous post should help you with the replacement of the internal hard disk, if that is of concern to you.

If there is no budget for a new laptop/PC, it is always a good idea to get acquainted with the service manual of the laptop/PC you do have.

Generally, replacing the internal hard disk of a laptop isn't difficult. Often there is a cover with one or two screws and/or a slide button that keeps the internal hard in it's place. Once the cover is removed, most of the time you see a plastic lip that makes it easy to slip the hard disk out of the SATA connector and that is all it takes to remove the internal hard disk. Reverse the steps with the hard disk you took from the external enclosure and you can boot the laptop to verify if the cloning process worked or not.

Exact specifics you'll find in your laptop's service manual. From what I remember, it is a very clear manual, using step by step instructions and lots of images along the way.

IainB:
@holt: Just reading through this thread to refresh my memory, I wondered about several things mentioned:
USB: The laptop has a USB port. You have connected this to a hard disk drive in an enclosure which supports USB 3.0.
The spec at http://gatewaycomputers.wikia.com/wiki/CX2720 doesn't mention USB at all, but it does mention Fastwire. It might be helpful if you posted the actual spec of your particular model of this laptop to a separate page on that wikia.com site, so we could all see it, and other people may be able to benefit from it too.

In any event, connecting a USB 3.0 device to a USB 2.0 port will result in data transfer rates that are considerably lower than USB 3.0 rates, and certainly not above the max rate enabled by USB 2.0. That is, though USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with USB 2.0, it cannot accelerate data transfer rates beyond the constraints/limits of USB 2.0.

AntiVirus: You appear to have opted for a $paid AV program. I would strongly recommend that you remove it and install Microsoft Security Essentials (discussed/reviewed elsewhere on DC Forum) - which is $free to personal users  and which has a very good engine that makes it the de facto choice for IT network engineers supporting high security commercial network installations - e.g., in banks. Furthermore, MSE continues to be rigorously supported and updated by Microsoft, to contend with any newly-discovered attacks. So, though Microsoft don't support XP any longer, they still support MSE (which post-dates XP anyway).

holt:
Thank you everyone. I need to mention I've been pretty sick lately, but can't say more. I'm taking it one day at a time.
Looking things over at ebay, I think it might be about as cheap to just get another complete used but serviceable Gateway TA-6 or -7 laptop; as to get just a new or used SSD for this one. I also see a few other models, MA-6, and so on. Then I'm not just acquiring a backup laptop HD, but the whole gizmo. The only other concern I have for now is that our microwave oven just died, and I had to reprioratize and order a new one, and put all my laptop ideas on the back burner for a little while.

holt:
The hard drives are different incompatible sizes.

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