m15X - 500GB?

I need some help/advice.

I have been looking for a 500GB hardrive for my m15x.

Here is what they have at Newegg now:

Notebook Hardrives

First of all, which one would be best and would all of these fit my laptop (including a smart bay enclosure)? I currently have the 200GB from Alienware.

Second, how easy will it be for me to clone my old hard drive over? I have purchased an extra smart bay enclosure under the assumption it will make my task easier. (I also thought it would be cool to use my old drive in the smart bay as a back up)

What are your recommendations?

 

Firstly, either one would fit your laptop, as it is the normal size for laptops. I'd recommend either the WD or Seagate, with WD ranking first.

Secondly, cloning your hard drive would be easy I suppose. I don't really do that, though. There are software that are recommended for this task. Just can't seem to recall any right now.

 

when it comes to harddrives, more than a few of my colleagues would say "western digital", and mention that you'd be crazy to buy anything but. Though I've had success with Seagate in the past and samsung is a respectable brand, in this case WD wins out.

about cloning the disk... this process is going to be slow. almost no matter what you do, it's going to cost you alot, or be slow.

First of all, the connection on the smart bay, from everything I've ever understood about the smart bay, is IDE, not SATA. the connection for the main HDD however, is SATA, not IDE. making the list of drives that will fit into each location, respectively, mutually exclusive. this means you need an external 2.5" enclosure.

The only way for an external enclosure, of this caliber, to run at a reasonable speed, is if it's enabled with firewire (or esata, but since the m15x is not esata enabled, I'll skip this point). such enclosures are more costly than their USB-Only counterparts. when using the USB enclosure, you're going to be limited in speed, though it won't be THAT bad.

for cloning the drive, PERSONALLY, I'd reformat... then just grab the data from the old drive some way (either USB or Firewire enclosure), then keep the drive around as a backup device, or similar. a USB enclosure would be good for this. The benefit of USB enclosures for 2.5" HDDs is that they typically don't need an outside power source (like their 3.5" equivilants), making them perfect for laptop applications. However, if you were to use Firewire instead of USB, you'd need an external power supply. but I digress.

If I were insistent on COPYING the data rather than reformatting, I'd likely use one of the tools included with most Linux Distributions. Since I'm familiar with the command line in linux, I'd probably choose dd. dd is a tool that directly copies (bit for bit) from one device or file to another device or file, so the move would consist of "dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb" (given that there are no other "sd" devices on the system, this should be the convention for it... and since I know the DVD drive is /dev/hda, this would likely be correct)... I'd probably check the device names prior using a utility called "gparted" which is a partition editor. I'd find my main, 200GB windows partition, and make note of it's device name, then switch devices using the drag-down in the upper right, to find the 500GB destination device (source would be if= (or in-file), destination would be of= (or out-file)).

Unfortunately, this would have the side-effect of making the copied file system on the 500GB drive only 200GB. so I'd use gparted (after the copy) to resize the 200GB partition on the 500GB drive to fit the entire disk. the drives would then be ready to be switched.

It's important to mention here that after resizing any NTFS partition in gparted, you'll want to run a check disk on that drive to fix any MFT inconsistencies. otherwise, if there's a problem with the main MFT (for any reason) most or all of the data on the drive could be lost (this happened to me recently).

I'd keep the replaced harddrive nearby in case of any problems and wait for a little while (to make sure the new harddrive is up to the task) before wiping the old one.

but all this is coming to you just as recommendation.

whatever you do, Good luck!

 

Excellent! Thanks for all the recommendations. Cloning the drive sounds like a lot more that I am up to. I really do not have a lot of technical expertise and I don't want to mess anything up.

I am currently running a backup of all my data on an external drive so I suppose that would help in this situation...

I did purchase the Alien Respawn disk, will that help at all?

 

Doing a backup is an excellent option.

My main concern is doing a file copy, backup or clone of a currently running file system. The operating system itself (Windows Vista) will automatically protect currently running system files, which could interfere with read-write operations. Also, you'd be making an image of an active system, so when installing the new drive, it would have an image of a system that's running, not one that was shut down, which would cause the system to believe it lost power. I don't need to tell anyone what headaches that could cause.

however, doing a fundamental backup, using software you own, is a great option. back it up either on to harddrive or DVD (maybe even NAS?)... regardless of backup media, do as full of a system backup as possible.

order an SATA disk for the drive, and use your AlienRespawn disk to put Vista onto the new Harddrive. once booted into Vista, restore your backup.

This is an effective and simple solution that should do the trick. though you might have to do some windows updates before the system really stabilizes.

I'll ask you to consider installing from scratch and only backing up personal data (eg. music, videos, documents, etc). The reason I say that, is that the restore process for applications can be jagged and just plain barbaric (in some cases)... to avoid any problems with applications, it's best to install them onto the fresh respawn of the system (onto the new harddrive).

By restoring your personal data, you shouldn't lose anything, and your system should be as stable as it was before the switch. The only downside is having to actually do the installs, and perhaps changing configuration options.

Whatever you decide, I'm sure many people will be around to help, including myself.

Good luck!

 

I think that's the route I will take. I really appreciate all the information and advice!

It will take a while but reinstalling all my applications will be worth it.

 

Use Norton ghost..
use a usb cd or floppy version boot it up,then copy the c drive contents over to the new drive in your smart bay or usb drive...
(it copys an image of your c drive to where ever you want, it will also leave your destination drive at the full cappacity).
job done.
it is easy and not that slow.

look it up.

 

$70 for a one-time backup/restore?

Honestly, there are better (and cheaper) ways.

 

Honestly I have restored my computer many times and I pretty much just devote 4 - 5 hours to get everything working again. I back up all my needed stuff (documents, videos, etc) onto a removable hard drive and then I just do a fresh install and re-install all the necessary drivers.

 

knowing alienware I would check first if having a new HDD does not void your warranty

 

Changing RAM and HD does not void your Alienware warranty

 

It only voids your warranty if you manage to break your system while doing so. I would still put back the original parts if you have to send the system back however.

 

As Stone said, in cases when you have to send it back. Do put the original parts back in there. And always back up whatever data that notebook has before you send it to them

 

There is some included software in vista to clone all the contents of a hard drive i believe. Either save them in multiple DVDs or connect and external hard driver and save the image there.

 

I believe the windows backup/restore suite is only available in Business and up, so unless he purchased Ultimate, he likely doesn't have the software.

 

Anyone know when 7200 RPM 500GBs will be out? Or if they're already out? I haven't been keeping up.

 

They'll be out end of this year, or probably Q1 '09. The Hitachi 5K500.B is going to be released, which according to figures, completely pwns the WD5000BEVT in terms of power consumption. (1.4W v/s 2.5W)

 

Wow I'm actually about to order a 500GB drive today from newegg seeing as the price of them has dropped a ton. It would be really nice to be able to keep all of my media work on a seperate hard drive but still have it within the computer.

I'll do a 160GB / 500GB combo and then if need be upgrade to dual 500GB's.

I need to call AW to get the mount for my laptop before hand though because there is a special thing that you have to mount the hard drives to in the M9750.

 

I am using this one for quite some time now. amazing performance no doubt they are Seagate Momentus

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148371

ohh.. btw I am using them even before they went publicly available for retail.
2x500GB with smart bay... no laptop in this class can match this performance.

1TB HDD, 6Hrs battery life and can turn into beast as well...

 

that's it, i'm getting one of those puppies next year. not to mention 64bit Vista.

 

Oooooh. I think I will get that one. Nice to hear from someone who has actually used one of these. Thanks!