Can A Hard Drive with programs be Swapped?

I Have a Dell Studio 15 with a bunch of Programs and files already setup. If they send me a replacement order could i just swap the hard drive with my existing one. Sorry wrong Forum, Using Phone Browser

 

Unlikely - they would request you hand over the old laptop as is at the same time you got the new one.

There would not be any chance to remove the hard drives out of each machine and swap them

 

buy any external drive and use ghost or acronis to backup your current hard drive to a image file. Then when you get the new laptop you can dump the backup image and everything will be like the original hd.

 

well they'll send a new one and then i send the old one back so I'll have both at the same time for a while.

 

Are you ABSOLUTELY sure that would work? I know those programs can fail sometimes. I spent literally 50 hours setting things up

 

Using image backup software isn't full proof; God knows I've had enough experience to tell you that, but the external drive suggestion from latinracer is the way to go. My suggestion would be to buy a cheap external usb drive enclosure from ebay, use either acronis migrate easy or paragon hard disc manager 2009 to make a direct real time image copy of your harddrive (Acronis has a 30 day full working trial version of migrate easy that I've used before and it works fast with the external usb drive without fuss) Once completed, take the drive from the external enclosure and install it into the notebook. Send the other one back. There's no risk involved because you'll have the original with your data intact and you can test the copy by removing one hard drive and putting in the other one. It'll just boot up exactly where you left off. For me, It's the most efficient way rather than relying on an image backup which sometimes can fail. That's why I've got two duplicate hard drives that I update once a month for peace of mind. I wouldn't suggest this and risk your data if I haven't been down your road a few times myself.

 

I've gotten my xps1330 replaced a few times and each time I swapped the new drive with my old one with the only issue was having to do online chat to get the Norton IS subscription transferred.

I suggest you try it and also agree you should back the drive up.

 

Use Acronis Migrate Easy 7.0 . I have personally used it on numerous occasions with different hdd sizes and it has worked flawlessly evey single time. No exceptions.

Retails for $40 on the Acronis site. I got it for pretty less using my company's account. PM me if you're interested. I can let them go for over 50% discount.

 

That's a very good idea for future laptop backups. What kind of enclosure for laptop HDDs?

I think right now I'll just use an external HDD though that I have.

 

So with these programs it will be LITERALLY like I never changed harddrives at all? No bugs like you might find when you say do an inplace upgrade of an existing Windows XP OS with a Vista?

And as far as the swapping harddrives things, would there be any problems with that functionally?

 

Just swap out the drive if they are sending you the same size. If they had you send in the laptop they would tell you to take out the drive anyhow because they aren't responsible for your data. You will have no issues doing this.

 

Well, something simple like this ebay item below would work and I've got a few of them lying around. Makes everything portable.

http://cgi.ebay.com/USB-2-0-2-5-SATA-HARD-DISK-DRIVE-CASE-Enclosure-New_W0QQitemZ280353402721QQcmdZViewItemQQptZPCC_Drives_Storage_Internal?hash=item41465d6f61&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=65%3A12|66%3A2|39%3A1|72%3A1234|240%3A1308|301%3A1|293%3A1|294%3A50

To answer your question about encountering bugs; None that I've encountered and yes the laptop will act like it has the same drive, albeit possibly with a bigger size hard drive depending on the size of the hard drive you're replacing it with. True Migrate is a no brainer type of program. You're literally making a bit for bit copy onto the new harddrive, so you're not overwriting anything like you would be doing with an OS upgrade, just making a copy and watching the progress. True Migrate will reboot the computer and then it's on auto pilot until it completes the task.

I would also do an industrial strength encryption delete of the hard drive you're sending back so you aren't opening yourself up to information theft. I'd rather be safe than sorry. Once you've completed the hard drive copy and installed the new drive, install the old drive into the usb enclosure and find any of the free secure file / disk delete tools out there to erase the drive.

IMHO, having a portable easy to get to the drive usb enclosure is the fastest and easiest way to get the task done.

 

Just swap the HDD's out. It should boot fine as long as the same hardware is in the new one. Dell doesn't really care and they wouldn't even know. Don't pay attention to any of the posts that say its not possible, or go through the trouble of ghosting or transferring files to an external hdd.

If you image your current drive and put it on the new one. It will be EXACTLY THE SAME as swapping the HDD's between the two, so for time's sake you might as well swap them. That's what I would do.

If you are having software problems though, it would be a good idea to start off with a fresh install though.