Apricorn EZ-UP-UNIVERSAL EZ Upgrade Universal Notebook Hard Drive Upgrade Kit

by Apricorn

Product Details

User's Guide [924kb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 5 x 3 x 1 inches ; 13.1 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S.
• ASIN: B00009WQS1
• Item model number: EZ-UP-UNIVERSAL
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (230 customer reviews)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: May 31, 2003

Product Description

From the manufacturer

EZ Upgrade makes upgrading your notebooks hard drive fast and easy. The AC adapter kit includes an external Hi-Speed USB 2.0 drive enclosure, USB & auxiliary power cable, and EZ Gig II Data Transfer Utility. That’s all you’ll need to transfer applications, settings, data and OS to a new hard drive.

Box Contents

• EZ Upgrade Enclosure
• EZ Gig II Data Transfer Utility for Windows
• 1 Meter PS/2 Cable
• USB Cable
• Quick Start Guide

Product Description

Universal Hdd Upgrade Kit F/ All Notebook Computers Pata & Sata

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Works like a charm!, August 15, 2006

By 

uncle-buck (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Apricorn EZ-UP-UNIVERSAL EZ Upgrade Universal Notebook Hard Drive Upgrade Kit (Personal Computers)

The 20 GB hard drive in my wife's notebook PC was almost full and we wanted to upgrade to a larger drive while preserving all of her programs, data, settings, etc. I did a search and found EZ Gig to be the preferred notebook hard drive upgrade/replacement solution.

It comes with excellent instructions and everything you need to get the job done (except the new drive which is purchased separately). It took less than 30 minutes to install the software and hardware, make a backup image of the old drive, start the cloning process, and install the new drive in the notebook PC. Obviously, the copying process can take a few hours, but that can be done at night or on the weekend when the PC is not in use.

This is an outstanding product and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to upgrade/replace the hard drive in their notebook PC.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Got the job done...with help, August 1, 2009

By 

Darryl Melander (Albuquerque, NM USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Apricorn EZ-UP-UNIVERSAL EZ Upgrade Universal Notebook Hard Drive Upgrade Kit (Personal Computers)

This product has two components: a hard drive enclosure that lets you use an internal laptop drive as if it were an external USB drive, and software that lets you backup or clone a hard drive. Each of these two components can be used independently of the other.

I bought this product to swap my laptop hard drive for a bigger one. The way this is supposed to work is that you get a new drive, convert it into an external drive by putting it in the Apricorn enclosure, use the Apricorn software to copy the old hard drive onto the new one, then take the new drive out of the enclosure and put it into the laptop.

Unfortunately I couldn't get the enclosure to work. In most of my attempts, Windows didn't see the drive. A couple of times Windows saw the drive but then was unable to use it. I couldn't read from it, write to it, or format it. This happened on both a laptop running Vista and a desktop running XP MCE. I suspect the problem was power. The kit does not come with a power cord, so the new hard drive has to be powered over the USB connection. I suspect this just isn't enough juice for my new drive.

Fortunately, the Apricorn software is robust enough to clone the disk in two steps rather than one IF you've got another external drive available. First the software creates an image of your original disk in a file on the external drive. Then you put the new drive into your laptop and use the Apricorn software to copy the image from the external drive to the new laptop drive. Worked like a charm. [To be clear, the image it puts on the external drive is just a file; the external drive contents are NOT wiped out.]

I wish I would have thought of the external drive approach before I wasted two hours with the Apricorn enclosure. The end result was exactly right, but the problems with the enclosure soured the experience for me. I recommend this kit if you've got another external drive you can use during the process. If not, you better be sure you have the right power cable or know where to get one.

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars works as advertised, September 11, 2007

By 

J. Kim "jack of all trades, master of none" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Apricorn EZ-UP-UNIVERSAL EZ Upgrade Universal Notebook Hard Drive Upgrade Kit (Personal Computers)

This product worked as advertised. Upgrading my hard drive was literally an EZ process.

I have a Thinkpad T40 with a 40GB internal hard drive (with two partitions) I wanted to upgrade. I bought a Hitachi TravelStar 160GB internal hard drive separately (obviously not included).

The process took three steps and less than thirty minutes:

Step One: Installed new hard drive into upgrade kit enclosure (this was very easy)
Step Two: Ghosted my original hard drive to the new hard drive (this took about thirty minutes and again, was very straightforward even with my partitions)
Step Three: Installed my new hard drive into my laptop and my old hard drive into the upgrade kit enclosure. (five minutes total time)

NOTE: I installed the software on the included CD-ROM onto my computer and ran it from there rather than booting from the CD-ROM directly.

The enclosure itself at first seemed flimsy, but after securing the hard drive with the included screws, it seems like a pretty solid unit. I am using my old hard drive as a bootable backup, not as an external hard drive, so I can't comment on that.

So after about thirty minutes of processing time, I booted up my computer, and lo and behold, it looked exactly as before, except with a greatly expanded hard drive.

I would recommend this product.