What brand and model of hard drive are you going to send me? We distribute several brands, and it all depends on which one we have in stock at the time you place your order.  We now only sell IBM, Maxtor, Fujitsu, Western Digital.  We also no longer sell the brand Hitachi, and will sell the Toshiba brand only when we have no choice.

Can I specify the brand that I would like you to send me?  No.  We reserve the option to ship whatever we have in stock on the day you place your order.

Do the hard drives you sell come formatted or ready to use? No. Any hard drive we sell comes to you unformatted. You will need to back-up your data before you remove your old drive. You will then need to format the new hard drive (with your own copy of DOS or any equivalent software) after you install it. You can also use the Bios Overlay Software that we offer on our website.

I am planning to order a hard drive upgrade from you. Is it fairly easy to install in my notebook/laptop computer? We don't know. There are just too many varieties of laptops and notebooks these days that it is impossible for us to tell you how easy, or how difficult, it will be to install a new hard drive. The best thing for you to do, before you place an order, is to try to remove, and re-install, your old hard drive just to see if you can do it without any problems. After you learn how to do it, or determine that you cannot do it, then you can make a decision on whether to order the hard drive upgrade or not.

Does your hard drive upgrade replace my computer's original hard drive, or is it added to what I have now? Whatever we sell is a direct "physical" replacement for the hard drive that came with your portable computer (subject to the same restrictions between "removable" and "internal" drives as explained above). So you would simply remove the old drive, put it aside, and install the drive you purchased from us, assuming of course that your computer's bios recognizes the new hard drive (if not, then bios overlay software does the trick in most cases).  If, however, you are purchasing a hard drive for a non-portable computer, such as a desktop or workstation, then the hard drive we sell can either replace or be added to your original hard drive.

Does the drive you sell fit into my laptop's CD Rom Bay, Floppy Drive Bay, or Select Bay?  We don't know.  As stated in our answer to the question just preceding this one, our drive replaces the main drive in your computer. So your best bet is to try the main drive that you already have in your laptop's CD Rom or Floppy Drive Bay - if it fits, then ours will too.

Will the bios in my computer recognize a bigger hard drive that I will buy from you, or do I need to purchase the Bios Overlay Software? We really don't know. In most cases, a laptop or notebook computer's bios sets the maximum capacity of hard drive that it will recognize. You would have to get into the Set-Up section of your computer and look at the maximum drive capacity that your bios allows. If the bios allows up to 4GB only for example, and you want to purchase an 8GB drive, then you would need to purchase the Bios Overlay Software.  But please don't ask us how to get into the Set-Up section of your computer, because we don't know since there are too many types of computers these days.  You have to consult your owner's manual or contact the company you bought the computer from.  You can, in some cases, get a bios update from the computer manufacturer, which will let your computer recognize larger-capacity hard drives. Some manufacturers, unfortunately, are very uncooperative and will tell you that the computer cannot be upgraded at all. The reason for this is because they would rather that you purchase a  new computer instead of upgrading your old one.  All we can tell you is that the Bios Overlay Software will, in most cases, override the capacity limitations set by the computer manufacturer's bios.

How does the drive you sell compare in speed and performance to the drive that came with my laptop?   Hard drive manufacturers always improve on new products.  So the newer the model and the larger the capacity, the faster the drive becomes. So you can be sure that when you are upgrading your drive to a higher capacity drive, you will always get one that is faster and better in performance than the one you already have.  For example, a 6.4GB drive will be always be faster and will perform better than a 5.0GB drive.

Can you sell me a drive that is bigger in capacity than the ones you list in your catalog?  No, the only hard drives available, at this time at least, are the ones listed in our online catalog.  As soon as larger-capacity drives are released, we immediately inlcude them in our catalog.

Do you sell just the hard drive caddy? No we do not at this time.