When the laptop “dies” or doesn’t boot up, if you’re lucky, the HDD has suffered no mechanical failure and is just fine, even if somehow Windows won’t load (like an NTLDR missing error, for example). Chances are, your data will be just fine and the fastest possible way to get the data off is to simply take the drive out and deal with it at the source.

In the laptop depicted in the video below, the power supply was shot and the system had 256MB of RAM running a very hot P4. A project for later, but the data needed to be taken off immediately.

(YouTube, Google Video, MetaCafe, Veoh, MSN Video, blip.tv, DailyMotion)

In this video, I walk you through the typical steps necessary to take data off a working laptop HDD from an old system. Note, that this video does not cover data recovery techniques in the event of a mechanically damaged HDD.

Taking the HDD out of a laptop is sometimes easy, sometimes very tricky. In this particular laptop, it wasn’t that tricky. In my experience, the HDD is usually accessible from under the keyboard in older laptops, so I checked there first. Obviously it wasn’t accessible from there, so I tried another opening which turned out to be much easier.

After the HDD is taken out, it is usually outfitted in a caddy of some sort to prevent shock & align it with whatever proprietary connector may or may not exist. In this case, there was a proprietary connector which comes off relatively easily.

For my purposes, I used a SATA/IDE to USB converter to transfer the data over quickly and easily, but I would have just as readily used an external 2.5″ HDD enclosure if I had one laying around. These can be had on eBay and elsewhere for as little as $10. (Search NewEgg.com for “SATA IDE USB” and that should deliver a lot of results. I suggest a brand like Vantec. It’s important to note that products like these are usually made by brands that are uncommon like Bytecc, iStarUSA, etc. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are bad, but I can’t really guide you here — it varies tremendously. The good news is that these particular products don’t cost all that much in the first place. Remember that a laptop hard drive is 2.5″ and a desktop hard drive is 3.5″)

As a cautionary note: when handling electronics, it is advised to ground yourself using an anti-static wrist wrap. The only reason why I was not using one for the video is because it was not mission-critical. Static electricity can devastate electronics! Be careful.

admin@variableghz.com

Physically, the TX2500 varies very little from the TX1000, where the major improvements lie are in the touchscreen and performance. My feeling about the TX1000 was that it was drastically underpowered and not up for the challenge of running Vista. The TX2500, however, feels powerful, balanced, and runs cool to boot.

The screen is very reflective, but no more so than the TX1000 which I got used to very quickly. It’s not a big deal after a little while. The touchscreen works quite well both with the wacom pen or direct touch. Here is a poorly made video demonstrating the TX2500 touchscreen:

(YouTube, Google Video, Metacafe, Veoh, MSN Video, Blip.TV, DailyMotion)

Specs:
- Windows Vista Home Premium (Service Pack 1 (32-bit))
- AMD Turion(TM) X2 Ultra Dual-Core Mobile Processor ZM-84 (2.3GHz)
- 12.1″ diagonal WXGA High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen (1280 x 800) w/Integrated Touch-screen display
- 3GB DDR2 System Memory
- ATI Radeon(TM) HD 3200 Graphics
- 250GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
- Webcam + Fingerprint Reader with HP Imprint Finish (Echo)
- Wireless-N Card w/ Bluetooth
- DVD/CD drive, LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVD+/-RW DL
- 6 Cell Lithium Ion Battery

This neat little Flash intro plays after booting the computer up for the first time.

However, in typical low-end PC fashion, HP tries to force Norton on you and the fun stops there.

Bummer. I clicked Yes. If there was any company I’d like to see fail, even more than GM, it would be Symantec.

I timed the initial set up of the notebook just for fun, results were 26 minutes, 13 seconds until I had a working desktop and the hdd stopped thrashing.

Few more photos of the unit:

After the computer was up and running, I uninstalled the following:

Yahoo! Toolbar

Yeah. I’m sure.

Viewpoint Media Player
SlingPlayer
Slingbox Flash Tour
QuickPlay SlingPlayer 0.4.6
Cyberlink PowerDirector
Cyberlink Power2Go
Norton Internet Security
My HP Games (WildTangent, must uncheck every one individually)
muvee autoProducer 6.1
Microsoft Works
Microsoft Office PowerPoint Viewer 2007
Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007
LiveUpdate
HP Update
HP Smart Web Printing
HP PhotoSmart Essential 2.5
HP Help and Support
HP Customer Experience Enhancements
CyberLink DVD Suite
Compatibility Pack for the 2007 Office system
Adobe Reader 8.1.0
Activation Assistant for the 2007 Microsoft Office suites

Then…

Installed 37 Windows Updates
Restart. Received the following error message:

Oh no!

Error automagically solved itself.

Install 6 more Windows Updates.
Received this error message:

Then…

Set IE7 homepage from hp-laptop.aol.com to google.com
Set IE7 search default from Yahoo to Google. Remove ask.com and yahoo permanently.
Restart.
Install 3 more Windows Updates.
Restart.
Install 2 more Windows Updates.
Restart.
Disabled UAC, set DPI to 120, disable automatic Windows Defender scans.

I was a little troubled by the number of processes running by default:

83 seems a bit high.

Using Windows Defender’s Software Explorer feature, I disable the following from starting automatically:

bttray.exe
sm56hlpr.exe
qpservice.exe
MUIStartMenu.exe
HPHC_Scheduler.exe
HPWAMain.exe

Installed the following programs:

Avast! Anti-Virus
Firefox
CCleaner
Google Chrome

Microsoft Office Professional Plus

… and that’s about it. The system is stable, good to go. I won’t go into details about heat and speed because other reviewers have documented that already. What I hadn’t seen was many photos of the unit until now.

Technical details/more reviews are over here, and here.

admin@variableghz.com