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Here’s how I upgraded the hard drive in a Sony Vaio PCG-V505DXP laptop. This laptop had an older 60GB 4200RPM IDE hard drive (Toshiba MK6021GAS). The original hard drive failed and I decided to upgrade it with a faster one.
I upgraded the laptop with an inexpensive 120GB 5400RMP WD Scorpio IDE drive (WD12000BEVE) and it works like a charm.
The drive replacement procedure is pretty simple and here it is.
First of all, unplug the battery. The hard drive compartment is located on the bottom of the laptop under the cover. Remove five screws and remove the cover.
Now remove two screws securing hard drive brackets to the base.
Carefully lift up the hard drive and unplug it from the connector on the motherboard.
Now you can unplug the hard drive cable.
You’ll have to transfer mounting brackets to the new drive. There is one bracket on each side of the hard drive.
Remove bracket from the right side.
Remove bracket from the left side.
This is my new WD Scorpio hard drive. You’ll have to use an IDE drive, not SATA.
Connect both brackets to the new drive, connect the cable, install the drive into the laptop and install the cover.
As you understand, the new drive comes without software. In order to install the operating system and applications you’ll have to run recovery discs.
Hopefully, you’ve created a set of recovery CDs or DVDs while your old hard drive was in a good working condition. If not, you’ll have to contact Sony and purchase recovery discs from them.
Boot your laptop from the first recovery disc and follow the wizard on the screen. This process will reimage your new hard drive to factory defaults.
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May 19th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Hi,
A few years ago I successfully upgraded the hard drive in my Vaio PCG-V505EC to a 160Gig. I recently purchased a new 360gig and using Norton Ghost V9 managed to upgrade once again but the additional space is not recognized. I am guessing their might be a limit to how much the bios can address but can not confirm this. Any suggestions?
Any chance may have restored with Norton improperly? Everything works but I just don’t see the additional storage (even with partition magic).
Thanks for your help
June 10th, 2009 at 2:26 am
can you help me in replacing my dc power jack on my PCG-GRX670
Sony laptop. Any help will be much appreciated
July 6th, 2009 at 12:43 am
Did as per guide and no probs except Recovery Disc applications will not load, says incompatible files for this model.
Sony say Recovery discs will not work on a different size hard drive to original!!!
Says cannot supply copies of applications due to copyrite (B***T) Can’t find a way out of problem.
Jim
July 6th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
Jim Elias,
I didn’t know that the recovery disc is somehow locked to the hard drive size. If the original hard drive is still in a good working condition, you can try reinstalling factory software on the original hard drive and then cloning it to a larger drive.
July 18th, 2009 at 7:55 am
I have a Sony PCG GR 414 SP the hard drive has failed I have recovery disc but says It cannot find Operating system when loading so I guess the hard drive has had It can u tell me an alternative Drive that I maybe able to replace It with and how I go about doing It
Many Thanks John
July 18th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
John,
Did you try booting from the recovery disc? Did you go though the whole recovery process?
August 16th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
[...] and can be done even by an inexperienced user. In one of the previous posts I explained how to remove and upgrade the hard drive in the same Sony Vaio PCG-V505 [...]
September 17th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
A.Friedman
A few years ago I successfully upgraded the hard drive in my Vaio PCG-V505EC to a 160Gig. I recently purchased a new 360gig and using Norton Ghost V9 managed to upgrade once again but the additional space is not recognized. I am guessing their might be a limit to how much the bios can address but can not confirm this. Any suggestions?
Any chance may have restored with Norton improperly? Everything works but I just don’t see the additional storage (even with partition magic).
The Vail PCV-V505 series does not see ant thing above 137 GB. If you use any drive above that size you need to use a dynamic disk overlay. This should be available on the installation. disk that shipped with or is available for download from the manufacture of the hard drive you installed
September 19th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Dave,
Make sure you are running the latest BIOS. Update the BIOS if there is a newer version available on Sony site. It’s possible that they fixed this with the BIOS update.
After the update try using Partition Magic again.
By the way, can you see the unused space in Windows disc management utility? Maybe instead of increasing the primary partition you can create a second partition on the drive?
November 9th, 2009 at 7:01 am
I have a sony vaio pcg-v505bcp the gov. removed the hard drive, and now I see i need a cable to attach a hard drive. Can you help me find a replacement cable that will work for this laptop? Thanks Wade.
November 9th, 2009 at 11:16 am
wade,
Try calling sparepartswarehouse.com, they carry a lot of parts for Sony laptop. They can find the part number and order it for you directly from Sony.
November 18th, 2009 at 9:15 am
Hi, regarding the 2nd image shown above, I would like to replace my fan because it wasn’t spinning at all, and my CPU heats up really fast, was wondering if you know how to remove that back cover that is partially covering the fan? and how would you go about in replacing it? thanks, and sorry if this is not in the right topic forum, but its does show the closest image to fan replacement, BTW read your instruction on how to replace the hard drive, really useful, did it myself when my hard drive needed an upgrade due to insufficient space.
November 18th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Terry,
I’m not sure, but I believe that in order to remove the cooling fan, you’ll have to disassemble the entire laptop. I think the fan is mounted on the motherboard, and the motherboard has to be removed.
Even though you can see the fan, it doesn’t mean that you can easily remove it.
On my last Sony laptop, I also could see the fan on the bottom, but it took me about 1.5 hours to replace it.
Here’s the picture: http://www.insidemylaptop.com/images/Sony-Vaio-VGN-SZ-series/take-apart-laptop-10.jpg
January 3rd, 2010 at 10:38 pm
I have a PCG-V505DX and need to replace the sound card. Do you have a tutorial for this?
Many thanks!
Dee