I have an IBM Z60t laptop which has only a 40gb hard drive. Does anyone know where I can reliably get the hard drive replaced with a larger one and have everything,including the XP operating system, safely transferred. I am in Pattaya.

I suggest that you reinstall the operating system again after you change your hard drive. Although you can transfer it to new disk (Uninstall drivers and ghost to new disk), it is always not that stable to use the old system in your new hard drive. Actually, all you need is an external hard drive box. You can do it on your own or almost everybody in any computer shop can help you.

Instead of upgrading your hard drive, For 3,000 thb you can get a Western Digital 500gb USB passport drive. This thing is extremely portable, can carry tons of data and hot sync your data from different PC's so you always have all the data in one place. If you need to go somewhere, holiday or whatever the USB drive can connect to any PC and all your data is right there with you without carrying a laptop around.

But if you insist, most PC shops can replace the hard drive and upload all your data for a small fee. Be careful as to the quality of the drive you end up purchasing, might get some junk. If you have the hard drive there I would sit there and watch until you were comfortable that they were doing what you paid them to do. If you leave the laptop like I said, you might find out they installed some thing other than what you paid for it.

To transfer your old data to the new HD is a question of some minutes with the right software. And the data don't care much about old/new disk. Just think about partitions if the new hard disk is very big. And let the shop check if the new HD works with your computer. Some older computers have problems with bigger disks.

I would use the old HD in an external USB box afterwards. Those boxes are very cheap - about Baht 500 when I bought it years ago. You can use it as backup drive. Perhaps the shop can help you with this too - just a matter of minutes to put it into the box. But make sure that the box has a USB cable included with two connections on one side and one on the other side. The two connections are often needed because those HDs need sometimes the power of 2 USB ports to run. Your computer should have 2 available USB ports then too. But anyhow - be prepared that a USB HD is slower than a HD inside the computer.

In Tukcom - I guess on the second or third floor - is a small shop where they do computer repairs. There are always many farangs standing around. When you come from the stair case (not escalator) go left until the end and then right. It is in the corner. Perhaps they can help. There is Wattana in Central Pattaya Road opposite the Foodland shop. But this might be a bit more expensive.