Swapping out a laptop hard drive-HOW TO!!!

[nemome]

I'm planning to swap out my Compaq Presario laptop hard drive. So far, i see it going like this, however, on each step I have questions, so if you could correct my thinking, I'd be thrilled. Else, this puppy's going to the rifle range.

1. Make boot disk for laptop A)I see I can make an msdos boot disk, but will that be sufficient to complete the process? If not what should I do and how?

2. Borrow external hard drive to clone current onboard hard drive. A)Can I clone my hard drive to an external without destroying the data currently on the external drive, or do I need to copy that to CDROM, and then do the clone process to the external hard drive?

3. Which function button allows me to set the bios so that the computer looks to other sources from which to boot, so that when I swap out the onboard drive, the computer will boot from the external hard drive?

4. Clone from the external hard drive to the new onboard hard drive? A)When I boot from the external, do I use the same F key to go into the bios and identify the new hard drive? What will be the process so the computer will recognize the new drive?

5.I've seen the post on recommended cloning software. After I install that software on the onboard drive and clone to the external drive, will I then have to install the cloning software on the external drive, or will the cloned installation from the original hard drive function?


That's about what I've come up with, besides drinking when it's over. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

 

[micker377]

Do you have access to a regular desktop? If so, just get a couple of 2.5 to IDE adapters (around $5), and just clone the old drive to the new drive. Put the new drive in the Presario and go! One of the things to be careful of: be sure you have all the drivers needed for YOUR laptop downloaded from Compaq BEFORE you start. What OS are you using? If XP, cloning may not be possible. Does the laptop have a CD rom drive?

 

[nemome]

I do have XP.

I have access to a laptop, but I am unclear as to the process. The harddrive on the laptop is relatively full. Would I somehow hookup both laptop hard drives to the desktop and clone from one to the other?

 

[vacunita]

Yep. If you get to 2.5 to 3.5 adapters you can Connect both Laptop hard drives to the desktop. You might need to disconnect the Cd-rom from the desktop to have 2 free IDE cable ends to connect the drives to. Then install the cloning software on the desktop, and clone one laptop hard drive to the other.

Ohh, you should not have any problem cloning even if it is XP. Since the cloning will produce and exact replica of what you had in the other drive. This includes drivers and everything.

Unless Xp complains about the different hard drive which is unlikely. If it does, you might need to perform a repair install but we will get to that when and if it happens.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[Freestone]

An alternative to the above 2.5 to 3.5 adapters and such would be to invest in an imaging software package such as Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost, create its bootable media, image current laptop drive to an external drive, swap out the laptop drive with new one, boot the imaging bootable media, bring back in the image from the external drive.

 

[nemome]

Thank you for the posts.

Dear Freestone, I think that is the method I originally posted that I wished to attempt. Could you review my initial post for accuracy of process. I have access to a friend's 160 gb external usb hard drive to which I would clone my 40gb and then back to a new 60 gb. Thanks again

 

[Freestone]

Your original post talks of cloning. The method I described is imaging. The two are completely different methods.

You first have to decide if you want to clone a drive or image a drive.

Cloning is best achieved by having both old and new drives available using methods described by micker377 and vacunita. Cloning destroys data on the target drive and usually requires a blank, non-partitioned drive. Cloning to your friend's external drive will most certainly destroy all of his data, so a backup is required.

Imaging creates a file (or files) on another partition, or on another drive, that contains a "picture" of the source partition(s) or drive. Since the image is a file itself, it will not destroy existing data on the target drive.

Cloning will usually be quicker as you are transferring data once, from old drive to new drive. But if you are using an intermediate drive, it will require two clone cycles. Imaging will require two transfers: one is the creation of the image file of the old drive, and the other is the recreation of the partition(s) and data on the new drive from the image file.

I will address imaging, as cloning has been covered by micker377 and vacunita. If you are going the cloning route and need more assistance, post again.

1. Make boot disk for laptop

Best bet is to make a bootable CD for the image product you choose. Norton Ghost may come with one. Acronis True Image, once installed, has a utility to create a bootable CD or bootable diskettes.

2. Borrow external hard drive to clone current onboard hard drive. A)Can I clone my hard drive to an external without destroying the data ...

Normally not necessary to backup data on the drive that will receive the image file, but maybe not a bad idea to back up the data, depending on the value of the data and/or your friendship. Accidents do happen.

3. Which function button allows me to set the bios so that the computer looks to other sources from which to boot, so that when I swap out the onboard drive, the computer will boot from the external hard drive?

I'm not familiar with Compaqs so I don't know what key gets one into BIOS nor the name of the BIOS function to set the boot sequence. Look for something called boot order, boot sequence, start sequence, or similar. But what you do want is to set to boot from CD, not from the external drive. The external drive will hold a rather large file that contains an image of the old laptop drive, not the actual files from the old drive, so there will be nothing on it to boot from.

4. Clone from the external hard drive to the new onboard hard drive? A)When I boot from the external,...

You will be booting from CD

5.I've seen the post on recommended cloning software. After I install that software on the onboard drive and clone to the external drive, will I then have to install the cloning software on the external drive, or will the cloned installation from the original hard drive function?

Not applicable to imaging as you will be booting from CD

 

[nemome]

Dear Freestone, Does the imaging process allow me to create a bootable, functioning duplicate of my current hard drive that will boot?

 

[Freestone]

Busy at work right now, but the short anwser is yes. As the new drive is an image of the original drive, it will boot and look the same as the old.

 

[nemome]

In the mirroring process, do I have to do any prep work to the new hard drive before I mirror back to it?

 

[Freestone]

No. If you are imaging, partition(s) will be recreated by the software. If your new drive's size is larger than the old, you should be presented with options to expand the partition(s) size to take up the additional space.