I decided to upgrade my IBM (now Lenovo) T42 notebook computer with more RAM and a larger hard disk. When I bought it some three years ago, it came with 1GB of RAM and a 60GB disk. In these days of massive photo files, 60GB disappears in a hurry, so I ordered a 160GB drive and a RAM kit to upgrade the machine to 2GB of RAM from CanadaRam.
CanadaRam's service so far has been excellent. A rep called me as soon as I filled out my order on their website to confirm things, and to let me know that the Seagate drive that I wanted was out of stock, but they had an equivalent Samsung drive. Never having bought a Samsung HD before, I asked what sort of reputation they had, and he said the drives seemed to be fast and reliable. A quick Google search confirmed that general experience, so I went ahead with the Samsung.
The package arrived in a day, and I got to work on replacing the RAM modules first. There were two 512MB modules in the notebook, one easily accessible beneath a panel on the underside of the machine, but the other entailed removing the keyboard to get at it. There are good RAM replacement instructions here.
Unfortunately, after I replaced the two 512MB modules with the two 1GB modules that I'd ordered, the computer kept freezing on boot, or occasionally Windows XP would load, but the machine would freeze upon trying to open an application. That can indicate a wonky RAM module, and when I shuffled one of the old 512MB units back into the computer, it ran fine. So for now I have 1.5GB of RAM, and will speak with CanadaRam about swapping the apparently defective 1GB module.
Next up, replacing the hard disk. Instructions for the physical swap are here. Before doing the physical swap, I installed the new 160GB Samsung drive in an external USB 2.0 enclosure, and used Acronis True Image Home 2009 to "clone" the old drive to the new one. Cloning means that all of the contents of the old drive are copied to the new drive sector by sector so that *everything* is exactly cloned -- OS, applications, data, the works.
After cloning the new drive, I did the physical swap, booted up, and everything ran perfectly. There was no change at all, aside from free space increasing from 4.7GB to 97.8GB. Success!