Alienware M11x - Replacing harddisk

Hello, currently I have a 218GB harddisk in this Alienware M11x which is a not quite enough for me.

I've been browsing around and heard good things about this harddisk:

Seagate hardeschijf: Momentus XT 500GB st95005620as - Centralpoint.nl

But my question is, does it fit in an Alienware M11x and how will I re-install Windows 7? Because this laptop doesn't have a disk drive.

 

USB CD drive or put Windows on a bootable USB stick.

 

I just ordered myself a nice 2.5" 7200RPM, 640GB Samsung Spinpoint this morning too. Which software did you use Janet? I've heard Acronis and/or Clonezilla may work well. I read a post about a user who had problems with Clonezilla though. Does Acronis work at the boot level or do you load windows and clone from there?

 

ahh cool, thanks. I'll take a look at that one. I haven't heard of it until now.

 

What exactly do you mean with cloning? You mean you just buy an external harddisk and then copy your entire system to that?

 

Yep, an exact duplicate image only with a newer, bigger drive. This way you don't have to reinstall all your programs, games, software, etc.

 

But the HDD I wanna buy is not an external, so can I still hook it up with USB?

 

When I swapped mine out, I used the free HDClone 3.9 and a cheap external enclosure. Essentially, at this point you have two options:

1. Make the backup USB stick using AlienRespawn and start over with a factory install.
2. Clone your current drive. Cloning is not the same as just copying either. Don't confuse external enclosures with external harddisks. This is an example of an enclosure. You still buy whatever hard drive you want separately, put it in the enclosure for the clone, then move it into your laptop.

Also, if you want faster answers, you should try searching through older threads.

 

I went to a 500GB MomentusXT. I took out the original drive and the new one and hooked them both up as extra drives in my desktop (so no enclosure required - although that would work too). I used Acronis 2009 to clone the 250GB drive to the 500GB drive. Straight cloning, I did not get Acronis to make the extra space available to the drive, I just did a one-to-one clone.

Then I put my 500GB drive (with only 250GB usable) into the M11x and booted up. It worked perfectly. Once I was sure it worked, I used the Windows Disk Manager to extend the partition to make the rest of the drive usable. It worked like a champ.

I could have used Acronis to make the extra space available and it probably would have worked. I was paranoid about losing data though so I did the one-to-one clone and made sure it worked first before expanding the partition and making the rest of the drive usable.

Cheers,
Stain

 

If I use that AlienRespawn thingy, I will keep all my files after I swapped my HDD? But I think AlienRespawn needs a lot of gigs for an USB stick, and that can get expensive.

Then again I don't know if an enclosure even exists for the HDD I want.

I don't mind slow answer as I don't have a lot of time to search

 

Any enclosure that6 handles a 2.5" SATA drive will work for the MomentusXT drive. But if you have a desktop computer around, just use that. No enclosure required. You just need a SATA cable and those usually come with the motherboard.

As for alienrespawn, I thought that essentially just reinstalled Windows.

 

Got no desktop PC, just a prehistoric trashy laptop. Guess I'll go for the enclosure, I take it these 2,5" SATA drive enclosures are pretty common to find?

Only thing I'm worried about is the cloning, perhaps it's easy but i've never done it before and i definitely don't wanna lose all my files, this laptop is filled with important schoolwork.

 

AlienRespawn won't keep all of your stuff. Since my first post, I can tell that you don't want that, so ignore that bit of advice.

Enclosures are very generic and definitely support that hard drive you have in mind. Just make sure that it supports the 2.5" form factor, accepts SATA hard drives, and connects to your computer using USB 2.0. Feel free to find one and post a link here if you are unsure. It would be nice if the m11x supported eSATA, but we are stuck with USB.

 

I'm about to clone mine right now, I got my new 1 Yottabyte hard drive right next to me. (j/k) That's one septillion bytes if I'm not bad with my math lol

But kidding aside, I am using a Sabrient USB 2.0 Sata adapter on a "naked" drive, no enclosure. Then the m11x goes into surgery for a brain transplant.

 

Arrgh! Easeus failed for me. I kept getting "Internal error" messages at around 75% completion. I think I may try something like Clonezilla that works at the bios level prior to booting Windows 7. The thing with Easeus is that it does the first two small partitions (Recovery and manufacturer's areas) fine, then gets about 3/4 of the way through my regular OS and programs and just stops. The drive reads fine as a healthy partition when I reformat and reinitialize. Part of me feels mad, the other part wants to laugh. I left it on all night...ah well. I'll try again this evening.

Here's the drive I got:
Newegg.com - SAMSUNG Spinpoint MP4 HM640JJ 640GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive
I was lucky, mine was on sale for about a day. Looks like they blasted it back up to retail again.

Edit: lol I just found this, a paltry 100GB greater in size for $45 bucks more than what I paid
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148599

 

Hmm, interesting. I did a quick reformat, but got the error again. Did you do a full NTFS format on the new drive, Janet? I think I may try that and then run Clonezilla. I burned an iso of one today.

 

Okay, gonna buy the aformentioned new harddisk tomorrow or the coming days, so it would be good if someone with experience in cloning could tell me the drills. What's the best program to use, how does it work, anything I gotta look out for?

If I get it correctly, I clone my current harddisk to the new one I get, by inserting it into an enclosure and hook it up to USB. Then after I swap the harddisks, I won't have to re-install Windows 7? All my files will be fully intact and ?

 

You might want to consider an external enclosure for your old drive so that it's still useful. That will also help you clone it. When you're done cloning, wipe the old drive and use it as an external removable drive to shuttle files around and offload stuff (makes your 640GB drive feel that much larger!). Oh, and the 218GB drive is just a formatted 250GB drive being measured in GiB vs. GB.

 

Ok guys, here's an update from me, sorry about the delay. (it took me all weekend lol)

I reformatted the entire drive, quick format unchecked. This took me approximately 16 hours...I just left it on all night. I had the drive hooked up "naked" with a Sabrient USB/SATA adapter. I then used Clonezilla's latest build which I downloaded straight from clonezilla.org. The rewrite with the image took me about 2 hours. for ~215GB of data and the three main partitions. I swapped out my new 640GB with the stock drive and Windows booted up like a charm. To be safe, I also ran ScanDisk and extended the partition on the boot sector to the full length of available space after it was finished. No problems here!

"Success!!" -Moe Howard, Jerry "Curly" Howard, and Larry Fine

 

I guess I could do that, but do I really need to buy an enclosure for the old drive to do the cloning process? I mean, the drive is in the laptop, so it's already hooked up... right?

 

In order to clone, you need both the new and the old HD connected at the same time for the data transfer. That is why an enclosure or some other way to connect the 2nd HD is required for the swap.

 

For those of you who want the non-enclosure option, I used this:

Sabrent USB 2.0 to IDE/SATA Cable for 2.5-Inch/ 3.5-Inch / 5.25-Inch Drive with Power Adapter at TigerDirect.com

Though they did raise the price a little from when I got it. I have a metal drive enclosure as well, but I was using it for a full 3.5" backup for my PS3 as I do that regularly.

 

I suppose if I am going to get a SSD and then use my 500gb I am getting with my new M11X as an external, it would make sense to clone and just swap them round and format the 500gb for use as an external?

 

Yep. Either that or make an image of the HDD on multiple DVDs or a network share then use a bootable imaging program to copy it back after swapping drives (must be bootable because the new drive won't have an OS otherwise, thus, no way to restore the image from a network share or disc backup).

These days, 50+ DVD-R discs just aren't realistic for backing up a whole HDD.

Of course. Some SSDs "upgrade kits" include an enclosure, but they cost more than just buying a $10 one elsewhere. Also, some even have a built-in USB "enclosure" in that they have a miniUSB port on the SSD and you can clone your boot drive to it before swapping it in, but that's no good either because you wouldn't have a real enclosure for your old drive.

 

So any feedback on the Momentus XT? I haven't heard anyone say the difference was night and day. I understand you have to boot your computer a few times to get the OS files to stay on the SSD, but... was it a worthwhile upgrade for you?

The drive is between a 75% and 100% premium over other 500gb 7200 rpm hard drives.