Straight laptop hard drive swap...

Narcoticx2 · 21st March 2007, 5:45 PM

Just wondering if there'd be any easy way to essentially keep everything on my laptop, and just upgrade straight from one hard drive to another? You'd think copying everything over (sort of mirroring it) would be a good idea but there's certain windows user related files that don't copy!

Any ideas/program suggestions?

Thanks!

Gierke · 21st March 2007, 5:54 PM

A program like Norton Ghost could be used to make an image onto an external drive or onto another pc on the network. Then once you've installed the new drive just boot into the ghost recovery cd and drag it back accross.

SLATYE · 21st March 2007, 5:56 PM

I assume that you could just buy the new drive, put both into your desktop PC, and then copy everything over from there (possibly using something like DriveImage XML to copy everything). Then on the new drive I assume you'd need to use GParted or Partition Magic to extend the partition (which will be the same size as the old drive) to fill the entire drive.

Narcoticx2 · 21st March 2007, 6:05 PM

hmm.. and are these mentioned programs free? i know about partition magic, that side of things isn't the problem. also the drive is currently in an external caddy so i can copy things over that way. i'll give some of the ideas here a shot though

SLATYE · 22nd March 2007, 5:36 PM

DriveImage XML and GParted are free, and both seem to work very nicely. Partition Magic isn't free, but GParted is virtually identical anyway.

21st March 2007, 5:45 PM	#1
Narcoticx2 Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Brisbane, Queensland Posts: 2,038	Straight laptop hard drive swap... Just wondering if there'd be any easy way to essentially keep everything on my laptop, and just upgrade straight from one hard drive to another? You'd think copying everything over (sort of mirroring it) would be a good idea but there's certain windows user related files that don't copy! Any ideas/program suggestions? Thanks! __________________ 33+ Successful Trades .e4300.4gb-pc6400.p5q.8800gts-512.1100gb.2709w.

21st March 2007, 5:54 PM	#2
Gierke Member Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Barossa Valley Posts: 1,562	A program like Norton Ghost could be used to make an image onto an external drive or onto another pc on the network. Then once you've installed the new drive just boot into the ghost recovery cd and drag it back accross. __________________ \| AMD X4 955 \| 4GB DDR2 \| 8800GTS 512MB \| WD 320GB AAKS \| Lian Li A03B \|

21st March 2007, 5:56 PM	#3
SLATYE SLATYE, not SLAYTE Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Canberra Posts: 21,040	I assume that you could just buy the new drive, put both into your desktop PC, and then copy everything over from there (possibly using something like DriveImage XML to copy everything). Then on the new drive I assume you'd need to use GParted or Partition Magic to extend the partition (which will be the same size as the old drive) to fill the entire drive. __________________ Main system: Pentium-D 805 \| 1GB (2x 512MB) PQI DDR400 \| Gigabyte 8I865GMK-775 \| Xtreama Radeon 9800Pro with Zalman ZM-80HP-D \| 320GB WD SATA HDD \| Antec SmartPower 2.0 500w Laptop: Compal EL80 \| C2D T7200 \| 320GB Fujistu HDD \| 2GB DDR2-667 \| GF Go 7600

21st March 2007, 6:05 PM	#4
Narcoticx2 Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: Brisbane, Queensland Posts: 2,038	hmm.. and are these mentioned programs free? i know about partition magic, that side of things isn't the problem. also the drive is currently in an external caddy so i can copy things over that way. i'll give some of the ideas here a shot though __________________ 33+ Successful Trades .e4300.4gb-pc6400.p5q.8800gts-512.1100gb.2709w.

22nd March 2007, 5:36 PM	#5
SLATYE SLATYE, not SLAYTE Join Date: Nov 2002 Location: Canberra Posts: 21,040	DriveImage XML and GParted are free, and both seem to work very nicely. Partition Magic isn't free, but GParted is virtually identical anyway. __________________ Main system: Pentium-D 805 \| 1GB (2x 512MB) PQI DDR400 \| Gigabyte 8I865GMK-775 \| Xtreama Radeon 9800Pro with Zalman ZM-80HP-D \| 320GB WD SATA HDD \| Antec SmartPower 2.0 500w Laptop: Compal EL80 \| C2D T7200 \| 320GB Fujistu HDD \| 2GB DDR2-667 \| GF Go 7600