You don't buy a tower. You assemble it...

Find a nice cabinet, pick a one or two generation old motherboard (Asus), an AMD older cpu, psu, ssd and you're off.

Cheaper and faster than any factory build tower.

As loads of people upgrade all the time, the're loads of fine second-hand stuff available...

Happy Journey!

Please don't waste a perfectly good computer just because a previous owner chose to install one of the least reliable HDDs made. Blue is WD's bottom of the line. Changing a HDD in older PCs and laptops is typically rather simple. If you clearly can't do it yourself after watching a youtube or two or three, surely you must know someone who can.

HDDs are commodities. It's hard to pick one that won't fit, but getting the most reliable isn't so easy any more, too many brands, plus the decision whether to stay with HDD, or switch to much faster SDD. SDD's in towers really don't need to be "installed". 2.5" SATA SSDs are so small and light, the cables can hold them well enough in place. Use some Gorilla tape if it wants to block fan output. This way you don't need to bother to determine how to remove the old HDD. Just leave it in there unconnected.

hazel,

I know you are probably going down another route, but if you can just find somebody who can wield a cross-head screwdriver, then it is not difficult to remove the old HDD and replace it with a SSD on your Thinkcentre M73:
https://support.lenovo.com/gb/en/vid...e-tiny-desktop

All you need to do is buy a suitable SSD and simply gaffer tape it to the original HDD bracket.

That is the cheapest way of resolving your problem.

There must be somebody locally who can give you a hand?

OK. I have dumped everything I could think of (EFI system partition, data partition, lfs) except for slackware root. The archive from that is too big for my vfat pendrive to handle, according to fsarchiver. But I have copied out /etc, $HOME and /var/lib/pkgtools/packages and that will give me enough info to reconstruct the rest. Remember, it's not a standard slackare; it's my personal selection of apps and their dependencies.

I have looked at the Lenovo Thinkcentre technical manual and there are detailed instructions there for changing a drive. It doesn't look too difficult, though I would need to have someone with me when I did it.

Some of my friends have Amazon accounts, so one of them could order that drive that beachboy recommended for me, but not if it needs a firmware upgrade! That's definitely beyond my capacity.

I have a CEX practically around the corner; could I buy a hard drive from them? I can ask obviously. But it would be second hand, so maybe the same problem.

There's also a Currys in Ruislip that I have visited before but I don't think they sell parts. I wish Maplins still existed. That was where I used to go for kit.

hazel,

There is HiTec Empire:

63 Station Approach
South Ruislip
Middlesex
HA4 6SD

Tel: 020 8833 4711

I would get a cheap new small SSD (128GB) similar to this Integral SATA III 2.5 one at about £15:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Integral-12...801688&sr=8-15

Give them a ring them first.

Alternatively, ask a friend to order the Integral SSD from Amazon.

That Lenovo video is easy to follow:
https://support.lenovo.com/gb/en/vid...e-tiny-desktop

Just tape the new SSD to the old HDD's retaining bracket.


EDIT
This Integral 256GB is even cheaper:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Integral-25...ct_top?ie=UTF8

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I shall be in church tomorrow so I will ask if someone can do the order for me. In the meantime I have more good news. On my data partition (which I have already dumped) there is a collection of most of the packages that I used to make the current slackware. So effectively I have a local Slackware-15 mini-repository. I'd forgotten all about it. It is slightly out of date but I can use it to reconstruct a working slackware on the new drive. I also have tgz files for some of the extra stuff from slackbuilds.

What I have in mind is:
1) Put the drive in
2) Boot SystemRescueCD and use gparted to set up the drive.
3) Still using SystemRescueCD, unpack efi (sda2), data(sda3) and LFS(sda6).
4) Install AntiX on sda5. That will give me a working system that I can chroot from (two if you count LFS) together with full online access.
5) Unpack a few basic Slackware files onto sda4, enough to make pkgtools work (I think basic libraries, bash, tar, xz and pkgtools itself should do it).
6) Use installpkg to install everything else that I have locally. Some things like /etc, ~ and /opt (where my printer files are) have been separately dumped.
7) Whatever else is needed can be added later.

hazel,

That sounds like a decent plan.

I am sure that someone will assist you by ordering the new SSD.

Do keep us informed of progress.

This can be done for short time use e. g. tests but it's a very bad idea for longtime use. SATA connectors are not designed for mechanical loads caused by weigth of a SSD. Materials of SATA connectors may creep under mechanical load which may cause loose contacts. If any mounting slot isn't availabe SATA SSDs should be fixed with some cable ties or isolated wire (e.g. YV 0.8 or similar) in the case.

SATA SSDs may become warm under heavy workload. Tape may impede heat dissipation of SSD. Cable ties or isolated wire should be used instead.

1 members found this post helpful.

All 2.5" SATA SSDs I've encountered are virtually weightless. When using them with locking SATA cables, there's no material load imposed on the connection.

They become warm regardless of load, warmer as load increases. Tape will impede heat transfer. I had thought about bringing heat up when I wrote, but apparently their manufacturers don't think heat is a serious issue. Most wrap their memory chips and controllers in heat insulating plastic. OTOH, when the device's screw threads are metallic instead of plastic, using screws to mount to a metal housing or 3.5"-to-2.5" adapter provides heat channeling. Yet, plastic adapters seem to be more common than metal ones. A little tape in one or two places probably doesn't make a material difference.

Not too likely to be on hand by someone who can't handle a screwdriver. And, there's nothing about a typical SSD for a cable tie to grab onto unless you have very long ones to wrap all the way around. I have a hard time imagining anyone like OP describes self managing this process.

Well, we'll see. I assume the drive will have screw holes, only differently spaced from a metal oxide drive because it's smaller. If so, I can put in 1 screw at least. And I do have a couple of quite long ties that could perhaps go around it.

hazel,

Yes, if you can only get one screw into the SSD, that should be fine.

Alternatively use a cable tie, which on reflection is probably better than gaffer tape.

Just out of curiosity: I have noticed lately that the startup POST takes longer than it did before. Is that because of the bad drive?

2.5" drives use smaller screws with finer pitch threads like you won't likely find around the house unless you disassemble everything before you throw it away. Some drives come with appropriate screws. Screw threads for floppy drives and OM drives match, but those screw lengths are typically longer, so could bottom out before affixing, or into something that screw contact could damage. For a professional quality job, use a 2.5"-to-3.5" adapter, which should come with appropriate screws.

Very possibly.

On the subject of securing SSDs with tape, I recollect that a friend gave me a desktop PC that he no longer required.

This machine had been refurbished by HP under warranty and it came with an SSD which was secured by a single piece of broad tape similar to duct/gorilla/gaffer tape, so I really doubt whether heat is a problem for such tape if it is being used by a major computer manufacturer.

When I cannibalised the PC, I do remember that it was very difficult to remove this tape.