Replacing Laptop HD with a bigger one

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jkcomputers said:
Put the Drive in 2 partitions though, 400 for the tunes and 100 for software etc... Will make it easier to restore if the c drive gets infected, dll files go missing etc...
Click to expand...

Thats exactly what i do now too!!! Cos i had a tuff time when my lappy had to be re installed earlier. Partition it into C and D and install ur warez into D
 
Anyone have a preference? Western Digital or Seagate? I don't see really any other common 2.5" drives on ebay or Newegg. Doesn't seem like IBM, Maxtor, Fujitsu etc. are making very many drives anymore.
 
The only 2.5" 7200 rpm drive that I know of is made by Seagate and I only know of one model. Every other 2.5" laptop drive I've seen is 5400 rpm. I don't thnk WD, Fujitsu, Samsung, Maxtor or any other company is making 2.5" 7200 rpm drives yet.
 
I was going to get a 320gb internal and I decided last night that maybe I should get a 500gb. I've seen deals on ebay for as low as $80 for the 500gb, but y'know, if ya snooze ya lose. I've seen 320gb drives for under $70. I ordered a 2.5" in an external enclosure for $110, I'm just waiting for it to come. I used to buy stuff from Newegg and Zipzoomfly, but I haven't bought any computer stuff in a long time.
 
Ok, I have an external drive now. I'd like to make an image of it that I can restore onto my new internal 320GB drive when it comes.

Any software out there that's public domain or freeware/shareware that will ghost my drive and restore to the new drive when it's installed into this laptop?

The 160GB drive that's in my machine now will then go into storage and when I decide that this computer needs to be replaced I can just reinstall the old drive with the original operating system and all.
 
Ok, I finally got a WD 320GB drive. I initialized it, formatted it and now I need to clone it. I looked at WD's web site and I can't seem to DL the Lifeguard program. The drive I got is an OEM drive so there was nothing on the drive and no disk came with it.

Anyone have a suggestion for a simple and effective drive cloning program?
I've tried Miray HDclone-didn't work, O&O Diskimage and the program that came with my Simpletech-Acronis. Nothing seems to work.
I found a program called Driveimage XML and it's running, but I have no idea if it's going to work.
 
more info

BTW gentlemen, Dell offers a couple of 17 inch laptops with bays for a second drive... and you can always dissasemble a usb external drive and use it!
 
Thanks to all for the help and suggestions. I opened the laptop which is a Dell 1720 and there is a second drive bay however, both bays use a proprietary edge connector. The original 160GB Toshiba has this connector. The Western Digital has an edge connector like you would see on a video card or other card that would go into a slot on a motherboard. There may be a special SATA cable or adapter, but I'm tired of fooling around with this.

I put the new WD Scorpio 320GB drive in a little aluminum external enclosure that I got off ebay which works fine. I bet other laptop companies like Acer, Toshiba, HP, Compaq etc. don't use the proprietary connector like Dell does. I hate proprietary stuff, it pisses me off. That Toshiba drive that came with the Dell can't be slipped into an external enclosure.

Now I am going to be religious about backing everything up regularly.
 
he caddy listed here comes with everything you need to add the drive, and appears to be the same as dell uses... just did it for my dell 1720....works flawlessy and fast ....worth the 30 bucks.... Newmodeus offers adapters for several notebooks....even 2nd bay adapters....BTW it took me forever to find Newmodeus.... One other thought....if you look at the toshiba drive in the Dell, the adapter will come off, it's just a sata drive....One last thing, their website give directions to help XP identify the drive...

http://newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=144
 
Dude, you're smart, that's exactly what the original drive is installed with. Thanks for for the tip on the adapter, someone else on another DJ board mentioned it too. So if I clone the drive and open the laptop up again, I can just remove the adapter, put it on the new drive and pop it in I think. Man, I gave up on this. It's been a pain doing something that should be simple. Try to figure out how to initialize a raw OEM drive with Vista without looking it up on the internet . . .
 
Newmodeus also sells the cable/software to easily clone your drive.... I always have trouble with connectors.... glad I could help...

As a suggestion, I would just add your new drive for music and videos, as drive e or f... that way if the operating system develops a virus or crashes, the music will be safer...and always keep an isolated external backup... I learned that lesson the hard way....
 
Well, my plan was to just clone the drive, install it into the drive #1 bay and then put the original drive away in a filing cabinet for safekeeping. I'm planning to do weekly backups at the very least and I have two other external drives that will have backups for redundancy. The way I have everything set up, my music and Karaoke files, programs etc. are just so valuable to me. I don't know what I would do if I lost it. I would lose it that's what I would do. The amount of time and work to recreate what I have now would be huge. I have become pretty paranoid about my laptop. I take it with me almost all the time just so I know where it is.
 
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