Hi, I have this IBM R40 laptop which i bought from school. The only problem is that the HD is 16 GB (with only 5 left) and I would like to buy a new 80 GB HD. I can physically change it but the thing is will i have to reinstall Windows? Cause as soon as i put in an empty HD, how is the computer even going to start up? So what do I need to do in order to upgrade my HD on my laptop? Thank you in advance!

You need to clone your old disk onto a new one. This necessitates the use of a program such as Acronis True Image. You can download a free trial of the program and during that period clone your disk. If you experience problems or you want guideance, join their forum. Here is the download site - http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/download/trueimage/ and here is the forum site - http://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=&f=65

Also many (all?) drive manufacturers provide a free util that will allow/enable you to copy the old drive to the new... (in effect clone it).

Exactly how you do this with a laptop I'm not sure. Does it even have two connectors/cables for harddrives? What about hidden restore partitions that many laptops have? This just might be one of those tasks to hand off to a professional. I used to have a signature but it disappeared and I just couldn't be bothered writing another so please feel free to ingore this.

good point... re' being a laptop... If there is a standard desktop PC available, one can use an adapter to connect the laptop drive to the desktop controller and do all that's needed that way? Also as already mooted... make an image (acronis?) save to optical media (DVD/CDR-RW); replace drive; restore image from optical media?

hey i managed to do upgrade my HD! i used acronis (thanks Tonto) i put the new HD in an external USB drive, formatted it and then cloned both the old HDD (onto the new one) swapped, worked like a charm!