Upgrading Laptop HDD

Elmo

I am planning to upgrade my laptop HD.

I am going to do the following: -

1. Backup current HDD with the following program http://www.acronis.eu/homecomputing/?source=eu_google&ad=acronis&c=3473462124&k=acronis&gclid=CLCY7J6uspwCFUxs4wodYh0PoA
2. Retrieve the date on the old HDD via the Recovery discs and with the use of the New HDD.

The HDD is SATA, is there any make that I should get over other ones and also are there other Recovery programs that will do a better job?

Solitaire

For that price you'd be far better off getting a cheapie 2.5" external SATA drive caddy and sticking the old HDD in there. Install the new HDD, install Windows, install drivers, update it and get all your security in place then connect the external drive and blitz it with anti-everything for good measure. Then just copy across all your data and anything mission-critical before formatting the old drive. Voila, nice clean new installation and a "new" external drive for a fraction of the price of that software that will probably only help clutter up your machine with nice big decomposing chunks of your old installation :P

Elmo

Solitaire wrote: »

For that price you'd be far better off getting a cheapie 2.5" external SATA drive caddy and sticking the old HDD in there. Install the new HDD, install Windows, install drivers, update it and get all your security in place then connect the external drive and blitz it with anti-everything for good measure. Then just copy across all your data and anything mission-critical before formatting the old drive. Voila, nice clean new installation and a "new" external drive for a fraction of the price of that software that will probably only help clutter up your machine with nice big decomposing chunks of your old installation :P

Will I have all my programs?

*shhh but I don't have keys for some of them shhh.

NotMe

If you get an external caddy you can just copy the old drive directly to the new one then swap them. Saves you messing about with backups and recovery disks. Don't buy Acronis though, there's plenty of free software that will do the job. EASEUS Diskcopy, Driveimage XML, Clonezilla, etc.

Solitaire

Use something like EASEUS, not Acronis. Bear in mind that transferring intact programs is risky and messy, as it inherently entails transferring and overwriting key chunks of your new Registry It kinda wrecks the unmentioned benefit of getting a new HDD - an unparallelled opportunity to make things go faster by cutting all the crap out of your new, lean OS installation

Elmo

NotMe wrote: »

If you get an external caddy you can just copy the old drive directly to the new one then swap them. Saves you messing about with backups and recovery disks. Don't buy Acronis though, there's plenty of free software that will do the job. EASEUS Diskcopy, Driveimage XML, Clonezilla, etc.

So how do I transfer the entire contents over?

Just copy and past the whole drive?

Solitaire

God no. You need to use one of the tools mentioned to transfer programs and with the drawback I mentioned. But it would take just a little longer to reinstall the program manually and cleanly! No pain, no gain!!

Documents and media on the other hand, along with most user/program settings hidden in Documents+Settings (Users in Vista/7) can be copied and pasted to the relevant directory on the new install so long as the program said settings are related to has already been installed.

Elmo

Sorry for being thick but I don't want to do this wrong: -

1. Get recovery program
2. Get caddy and place New HDD in new caddy, use new HDD as your recovery disc.
3. Turn off laptop, take out HDD and replace with new HDD
4. Start recovery programmes

It is Windows XP.

Solitaire

If you buy a caddy you can just install the new HDD in the laptop and the old one in the caddy, install Windows then use the program to copy directly if it supports direct recovery (i.e. use the old disk directly as the recovery medium instead of messing with stacks of DVDs or partitions on your new HDD). But in any case doing the whole thing the old-fashioned way is just better practice as your old installation is probably full of random crap, old stuff, surplus programs, viruses, broken Registry entries and the like and using recovery programs is likely to pollute your new installation with at least some of the crap you're trying to leave behind. Do you really have that many programs to reinstall?

Elmo

Solitaire wrote: »

If you buy a caddy you can just install the new HDD in the laptop and the old one in the caddy, install Windows then use the program to copy directly if it supports direct recovery (i.e. use the old disk directly as the recovery medium instead of messing with stacks of DVDs or partitions on your new HDD). But in any case doing the whole thing the old-fashioned way is just better practice as your old installation is probably full of random crap, old stuff, surplus programs, viruses, broken Registry entries and the like and using recovery programs is likely to pollute your new installation with at least some of the crap you're trying to leave behind. Do you really have that many programs to reinstall?

I just really need to keep the new HDD as the old HDD.

Now when you say install windows do you mean doing it from a CD first or directly from the old HD?

Elmo

I want to do it in one go, everything all at the same time the recovery discs seem like the most sensible to me, no messing just, back up, install new HDD, restart and there you have your new HDD with all your stuff even the virus but I would run an anti-virus before doing the back up.

I don't want to have to reinstall the OS can this be done?

Solitaire

Elmo wrote:

Now when you say install windows do you mean doing it from a CD first or directly from the old HD?

Don't even think its possible to do the latter, and it certainly wouldn't be funny or clever. That's just asking for trouble Once the new drive is installed in the laptop install Windows normally via the DVD, then once its done install updates and drivers. Its from there that opinion differs - do things the old-fashioned way (slow, safe, clean) or (ab)use a recovery program and try to shift entire program installations over from the old drive onto your new install (quick, risky, messy).

Effluo

Why do you want to upgrade your hard-drive to start with? Do you have some kind of problem with your laptop as it is?

If it's just for media storage then i'd recommend you get a portable external hard-drive.
60-70 euro for 250 gigs and you lose a heck of a lot of hassle. You can't being listening to 1000 songs or watching 40 movies at the same time, if you know what i mean...

When i said 60-70 for a 250gig portable hd i meant wow i forgot about deal extrem just a bit over 46 euro delivered for this 250gb drive
http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.14587

NotMe

Elmo wrote: »

Sorry for being thick but I don't want to do this wrong: -

1. Get recovery program
2. Get caddy and place New HDD in new caddy, use new HDD as your recovery disc.
3. Turn off laptop, take out HDD and replace with new HDD
4. Start recovery programmes

It is Windows XP.

1. Download EASEUS Disk Copy and burn it to a cd.
2. Put new hd in caddy and boot from easeus cd.
3. Select the disk copy option and source and destination disks. Now your new hd is a copy of the old one.
4. Put new hd in laptop and you're good to go.
5. If you copy a 100gb partition onto a 250gb drive say, then you'll end up with a 100gb partition and 150gb of unallocated space. So you'll need to run some partitioning software to either resize the partition to 250gb or create a new partition in the free space.