Restoring content from old HD to New Upgrade

cormie

Hi there,
I'm thinking of upgrading the HD in my Dell Vostro 1500 from what appears to be this: http://www.toshibastorage.com/main.aspx?Path=StorageSolutions/2.5-inchHardDiskDrives/MK1637GSXPage (I see that model number in the hardware tab when I click C driver properties in my computer) to a 500gb one. Can anyone recommend a 500GB that is the same quality as the one I have with regards speed and buffer? As far as I know, Toshiba and Western Digital are the best to go for and what's the story with replacing them on the Dell Vostro 1500 does anyone know? Will it void any warranty, do I need to open up the machine fully or is there simply a slot I unscrew and re-attach?

I found this one:http://elara.ie/products/detailsfull.asp?productcode=ECE1619650 which seems to be perfect and the best price from all the websites, so I just need to know if I restore an image of my hard drive to this, will it be fine and dandy or will I run into problems because it's a different make/model/size hard drive? And will I be voiding my dell warranty replacing it I wonder?

Can I just save an image of my current HD to a USB and then restore it to the new 500GB HD and everything will be as it was, or will this cause problems since the HD's will be different and the restored image will think it's still a 160gb HD by toshiba?

Any help appreciated

cormie

Anyone have any info on this?

CHW

As long as the new hard drive has the same type of connection and is the same size (physically) as your current one, then it should be a straight swap with no issues, it doesn't matter on the brand of the hard drive.

As for the brand, I've used (and am using) many different brands (Seagate/Maxtor/WD), and haven't had any experience that any are better or worse than others. But you'll see varying opinions about the internet.

Changing it seems easy: http://raybdbomb.com/p/dell-vostro-1500-hard-drive-replacement.html

I don't think hard drive change will void warranty (maybe on the hard drive you swap out, but not the rest of the laptop, but you'd want to double-check).

Easiest way to clone the hard drive would be to get a USB>IDE/SATA cable or USB 2.5 enclosure, and install a ghosting program (like Maxtor Maxblast, it's free) on a PC or your current laptop, clone the hard drive to an image on the PC/laptop, then inject it to the new hard drive through the cable or enclosure using the ghosting program. Then swap hard drives. Once all is ok, you can then use the old hard drive (with cable or enclosure) as a portable back-up solution.

EDIT: Google "clone laptop hard drive" for some good articles.

cormie

That's great, thanks for your help I have Acronis true image so what I plan to do since I don't have a 2.5 enclosure or USB>IDE cable, is to just put the HD in, install windows, install Acronis and restore an image of my current HD and hopefully that will work

Great that there will be no problems with the new size/manufacturer even though the image may have data thinking it's using the old one :cool:

CHW

cormie wrote: »

That's great, thanks for your help I have Acronis true image so what I plan to do since I don't have a 2.5 enclosure or USB>IDE cable, is to just put the HD in, install windows, install Acronis and restore an image of my current HD and hopefully that will work

Great that there will be no problems with the new size/manufacturer even though the image may have data thinking it's using the old one :cool:

That should work, but I think you will need to put the image you want to restore on some sort of removable storage then (DVD-R or USB). Depending on your current installation, you'll need a solution that will be big enough to hold it.

A good thing about using images in this way is that you don't have a multitude of OS updates at re-install.

cormie

Yeah my OS is tweaked to bits to have it set up exactly the way I want it, I'm a perfectionist with things like that :pac:

I've a few external HD's so it should be a problem to restore from them.

thanks again for the help