I dropped my Kogan Agora 12 Inch laptop onto a stone floor. Remarkably
there was no damage to the case or screen (the screen was open at the
time and the computer running). But the hard disk was not functioning
afterwards, so I replaced the 2.5 Inch SATA disk drive with a Solid
State Disk (SSD). This turned out to be a useful upgrade: relatively
easy and inexpensive.
Kogan offered me a 30GB SSD, as provided in one model of the laptop, but
I decided on a larger 60 GB unit, costing 50% more for twice as much
storage.
Replacing the disk drive required me to un-clip the battery from the
back of the laptop and remove one screw holding a small panel over the
disk drive. The disk then slid out and I slid the new SSD in. The new
disk was completely blank so I booted the computer from a USB flash
drive with a copy of Ubuntu Linux on it and then partitioned the disk
with that and installed Linux. This took about 20 minutes.
After installing Linux, about 40 GB of the disk is available for data.
As I just use the computer for taking notes, the smaller 30 GB disk
would have been adequate (with Linux taking up about 20 GB), but the
extra space may be handy.
The computer seems to boot a bit quicker but otherwise is no different
in operation. I am yet to see if the battery lasts longer with the lower
power storage device.
More at: http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/12/solid-state-disk-for-laptop.html
--
Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au
Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards
Legislation
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science,
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
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