[rohan_iitr]

Originally Posted by Tgo

Apparently you can't return items for a refund now on Amazon. Pick-up was cancelled.

I had purchased an incompatible DVD caddy from Amazon India recently.

I wrote to Amazon customer care and explained that I have ordered an incompatible item by mistake. They gladly accepted my return request and have assured that refund would be processed after item is received.

It may be noted that this is the first time I am returning anything purchased from Amazon. (So my track record is very good)

Rohan

[batman]

Originally Posted by rohan_iitr

Have I bought a wrong DVD caddy ? All the DVD caddies which I saw online have similar connector.

Take a look at this, if you had not found an alternative yet.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/2nd-...700912814.html

Recently I bought a caddy for my laptop (with SATA interface) from Aliexpress and found it was slightly bent on the surface which must have happened in the transit; However, it was fully functional. The quality of the caddy may not be great but certainly was enough for the purpose.

[rohan_iitr]

Originally Posted by rohan_iitr

I have a 10 year old Dell Inspiron 1420, which I use very occasionally (mostly for internet browsing only).
Since the laptop is old, I am not too keen on spending much at the moment.

So, after getting inspired by this thread, I decided to take the DIY route for upgrading my 10 year old laptop.

Faced a few hiccups, but all is well now. Best part is that I got the satisfaction of doing it myself, plus I was able to avoid a trip (in Bangalore's maddening traffic) to the computer market.

I had ordered an entry level 240GB SSD and a 2GB DDR2 module, along with an external HDD case to use my old HDD.

Replaced the old HDD with SSD, upgraded the RAM from 2GB to 3GB (final target is 4GB) and did a clean Windows install.

In less than 5k INR, I was able to improve the performance of a 10 year old machine to what is considered acceptable as on today.

Thanks to everyone who replied to my silly queries on this thread.

Rohan

[Tgo]

Finally was able to install the correct caddy (9.5mm thick) into the slim CD drive slot with the old HDD working as a second drive. Replaced the front plate from the old CD drive onto the caddy face plate to give it the stock look. Fitting was not very slick since the clips were broken on the old face plate used some tape in a concealed manner.

Originally Posted by rohan_iitr

Thanks to everyone who replied to my silly queries on this thread.

... and a big thanks to you, for sharing the return procedure. I did the same for the 12.7 mm thick caddy I ordered by mistake. I have been refunded the full amount after the return pick-up.

[Tgo]

Need a little help.

I installed a 128GB mSATA SSD on to the slot provided in the motherboard of my old ThinkPad L420. The idea was to clone the HDD onto this SSD. Format the HDD and use it for storage without removing it from the Laptop and also utilizing the extra lot on the motherboard.

• After installing the mSATA SSD are there any setting I need to change in the BIOS (other than Boot Order)?
• Is it because of a re-designation of the HDD drive letter after installing the mSATA SSD?

Currently, windows does not load and goes into recovery mode on start-up. If I remove the SSD it starts-up normally. I have already tried changing the boot order in the BIOS.

[Tgo]

Originally Posted by Tgo

Need a little help.

Solved the issue which wasn't actually an issue but stupidity on my part. Reordered the boot order correctly and it works fine. Boot time has reduced from 1 minute 16 seconds to 30 seconds flat.

The fact that the mSATA SSD (sourced from OldLappy.com) had some remnants of the OS from its previous use didn't help since the boot loader was detecting an OS in that drive and trying to boot from it. Formatted the SSD. Cloned the HDD OS partition onto it. The laptop is now on SSD. HDD in its original slot.

Working on this laptop has been a breeze since majority replacement parts are easily accessible and availability of detailed removal and installation procedures and availability of parts catalog online on Lenovo Support website. Also found this it to be more sturdily built since I found no cracked plastic bits in the casing except for a small tab on the speaker module.

Regular stuff included cleaning of the fan and heat sink fins, Application of Thermal paste which was pending since last opening of the laptop done 4 years ago.

Additional work done was tightening of the hinges so that torque required to open and close the screen is a bit more. This was an issue with the L420 series of ThinkPad laptops since day one. The screen had to be kept vertical (+/- 10 degrees) or it would fall due to its own weight. Happy to report that the hinges are serviceable. It needed a tightening of the HEX Nut a the end of the hinges

NEED HELP! (For Real)
I deleted a partition on the HDD which had important files. The files to be recovered total up to 20 GB approx. How do I recover them? Suggest some software please.

[--gKrish--]

Originally Posted by Tgo

I deleted a partition on the HDD which had important files. The files to be recovered total up to 20 GB approx. How do I recover them? Suggest some software please.

I've used EaseUS Data Recovery when I was in a similar situation and was able to recover all the data. Make sure that you do not overwrite on that partition before completing thr recovery. Recover the data to some other partition and copy it after the recovery is completed. It might take a few hours.

[Tgo]

Originally Posted by --gKrish--

I've used EaseUS Data Recovery...Recover the data to some other partition and copy it after the recovery is completed. It might take a few hours.

Thanks for the heads-up. I also scanned using EaseUS data recovery and it has generated a list of all folders and files it has detected.

Did you use the full version or just the Demo with a 1GB limit? I need to recover 20 GB of data.

[--gKrish--]

Originally Posted by Tgo

Thanks for the heads-up. I also scanned using EaseUS data recovery and it has generated a list of all folders and files it has detected.

Did you use the full version or just the Demo with a 1GB limit? I need to recover 20 GB of data.

I had totally missed the maximum file size part of it. To me it was never an issue and the free version was more than enough because I only had to recover a few scanned documents and excel sheets and it hardly took 100MB.

This was quite a few years back and I'm not sure if the current one has this functionality, but earlier, one could save the scan list and recover selected files at a later time and the file size cap is for the size of files you can recover at a time. So for small files you can try recovering in steps of 1gb. The full version now costs Rs.6300 and is definitely not worth for 20gb of data. Get it done for a fraction of it from a store or use testdisk/photorec by Grenier or similar reliable open source software if the recovery in steps like I suggested doesn't work in current EaseUS.

[Tgo]

Originally Posted by --gKrish--

So for small files you can try recovering in steps of 1gb.

Thanks for this info. Files recovered.

Originally Posted by Tgo

Thanks everyone. Files have been restored last night.

In the end I ended up speaking to my brother about the most essential files he needed to be recovered. They were within 1 GB limit of the demo version of EaseUS. Someone suggested you can recover in multiple steps of 1 GB with the demo version. Will try this later.

Tried recuva as well (usually bundled with CCleaner. had to quick format the unallocated disk for the software to detect it. Did a deep scan. Sorted by file size and Photos/Documents/Videos/Music (in built sort feature in the software. Ran the recovery for each file type and have recovered the files as a trial basis. This software doesn't have any recovery size limitation but the folder structure is not convincingly restored. This is more like a RAW recovery based on file extensions.

[navin_v8]

This wonderful thread on TeamBHP came in handy for me while I was upgrading my more than 11 years old laptop.

Like most people I have two laptops one is personal and other is official. The official one is the latest up to/exceeding current standards top of the line windows OS laptop.

Whereas my personal laptop that I use at home for checking emails, watching movies, editing documents, etc. is a 11+ years old Acer Aspire 5920. It came with a 160 GB HDD(Western Digital make), 2 GB RAM and a Intel 2.2 GHz Core2Duo processor.

The laptop was showing its age wherein it used to take a couple of minutes to boot up and used to hang while multitasking. I decided to check on international forums if my old laptop could be upgraded, if yes what would be the ideal configuration to do so.

After a lot of research I came to know that the max RAM I can take my laptop up to is 4 GB RAM, while adding a SSD would make it even faster than before. Now that I knew what I wanted I bought 4 GB RAM (Samsung make) along with a Kingston 240 GB SSD from Amazon India. The price which I managed to get them was lesser than quoted by brick and mortar shops.

Post the upgrade my laptop boots up in less than a minute and the performance has been excellent for light and medium tasks. The difference in speed and performance is definitely felt and I am happy with this decision. This time I went with only two disk partitions as most people do. Plan to use my personal laptop for another 5-7 years.

I also purchased a cover for my old HDD(160 GB) for 300 bucks and now using it as an external HDD.

P.S. Like most laptops of similar age my laptop's battery has no juice left. I don't intend to invest in a "compatible" battery hence using it with direct power mode only.

[Tgo]

Originally Posted by navin_v8

Post the upgrade my laptop boots up in less than a minute and the performance has been excellent for light and medium tasks.

P.S. Like most laptops of similar age my laptop's battery has no juice left. I don't intend to invest in a "compatible" battery hence using it with direct power mode only.

For an 11 year old laptop the OS and the old software is more of a limiting factor in the performance now. You could try a clean install of the OS your are running to boost it up further. Upgrading to Win10 doesn't make sense.

People buy a corporate buyback auctioned machine now a days and upgrade it as per their needs. They also come with latest OS and software sometimes.

[civic-sense]

Originally Posted by Tgo

For an 11 year old laptop the OS and the old software is more of a limiting factor in the performance now. You could try a clean install of the OS your are running to boost it up further. Upgrading to Win10 doesn't make sense.

People buy a corporate buyback auctioned machine now a days and upgrade it as per their needs. They also come with latest OS and software sometimes.

Though I am not a big fan of Linux, I would recommend a lean OS like Linux Mint for machines with old hardware. Well, it depends on how important Windows only apps like Office is important to the user.

[navin_v8]

Originally Posted by Tgo

For an 11 year old laptop the OS and the old software is more of a limiting factor in the performance now. You could try a clean install of the OS your are running to boost it up further. Upgrading to Win10 doesn't make sense.

I know mate but as long as Microsoft is giving support for Windows 7, I am good. Last I heard the deadline was Jan 14 2020. Post that I will upgrade to either Ubuntu or Windows 10. My usage is very minimal at home for plain surfing, editing documents, etc.

People buy a corporate buyback auctioned machine now a days and upgrade it as per their needs. They also come with latest OS and software sometimes.

Thanks for the tip mate.

[sagarpadaki]

Originally Posted by navin_v8

I know mate but as long as Microsoft is giving support for Windows 7, I am good. Last I heard the deadline was Jan 14 2020. Post that I will upgrade to either Ubuntu or Windows 10. My usage is very minimal at home for plain surfing, editing documents, etc.

Thanks for the tip mate.

I would not suggest you upgrade to windows 10 with your laptop. I have a similar vintage Dell laptop with 4 GB RAM. I upgraded it to windows 10 and the ram consumption at idle is around 2.8GB and CPU usage around 50-60%. Opening or running a simple word document will push the ram usage beyond 3 GB and the machine starts to crib.