Portégé Laptops

[#1]

Hello,

My neighbor gave me his 7020ct running win 2000Pro and forgot to give me his password.

Since he has left the country and I cannot reach him I want to replace his HD with a new HD and install WinXP home.

Does anyone know if the mobo is compatible with XP or do I have to install win 2000pro or win 98se?

The Toshiba site is not very helpful and I would like to install the largest HD possible, does anyone know the capacity of the 7020ct?

Thanks in advance.

[#2]

I don't understand what you mean about the support site not being helpful.  I had no problems finding out that WIndows 2000 is the latest  operating system that is supported (there aren't any XP drivers available).  The hard drive is a different story as one needs to know more than the support site provides to know the limitations.  The bios on that system does NOT have 48bit addressing so it can not support a hard drive larger than 137gb in size.  While the system is an ATA-2 (Ultra DMA 33) it should be able to utilize any 2.5" EIDE hard drive 120gb or less.

[#3]

Thanks for your reply.

Concerning the hard drive and your response that any EIDE 2.5" 120gb and under will be compatible I assume I can replace the ATA-2 with a ATA-6 even though the bios is not 48 bit addressing

I'm confirming this because when I asked Toshiba Tech Support today they didn't know if it was compatible.

Thanks in advance.

[#4]

Yes you can.  An ATA-6 drive is backwards compatable and will run on an ATA-2 system as long as it doesn't exceed the bios capacity.  Some drives might have to be jumpered to run that way though but you'll need to consult the documentation for the drive you purchase about that.

[#5 · Accepted solution]

Thanks again.