Failing hd, disc imaging and Win7 upgrade questions

Moved post from Acer forum...

I want to switch to a new larger hd and upgrade to win7. Currently have a 250gb hd, partitioned (I think in-half) with Vista on a C partition and multiple users’ settings on D. The drive runs very hot; turn laptop on and watch the temp steadily climb (viewed via HD Tune) to 60celcius and then it shuts down.
I am looking for the simplest way to ensure that I have all of my current programs (with licenses, activations, etc. working) and settings as in Vista migrated to Win 7. (primarily iTunes and media library).

1. If I use a disc cloning program like Macrium free to create a disc image of my current hd onto an external usb 1tb drive, then remove the current Vista hd, install the new blank internal hd and restore the disc image, will I have the Vista programs and settings copied and working on the new hd (in Vista)?

2. If so, can I then follow the Win 7 upgrade to achieve what I am looking for? I have seen others recommend against upgrade installs of Win 7, suggesting clean install and manually re-installing programs one by one. I am reluctant to do this; I probably have 200 programs and think it would be too difficult and time consuming.

3. Is there a better way to accomplish this?

4. Will a new hdd run cooler? At least enough so that it doesn’t crash and shut down, or is there some issue with the laptop besides the hd that could cause high temps?

Thanks.

 

Deleted your other thread.

 

Well
Assuming the shutdown is caused by the HDD you do appear to have a problem - Most usually the main bearing is failing.

What temperatures are reported for the CPU etc though . Are you sure the Fan is working and that the whole laptop is not overheating ?

Provided you can image the whole drive before it shuts down you can indeed do that and upon restoration to a blank new drive everything will 'hopefully' be there.

I prefer Paragon but yes most HDD imaging programmes are capable of a simple whole disk image.

HOWEVER, regardig the 'hopefully' in the last section . . .
If the disk glitches or shuts down while backing up (which could take several hours) you may have an unrecoverable archive and lose your backup of several GB of data as a minimum. Or yo may have to restart the image again and work the dying drive still harder. I most strongly suggest FIRST backing up music/photos/documents/licenses/programmeKeys/ email etc as simple folders and files on a USB external drive and checking they are all copied ok ( as well which if they fail will fail noticably and one by one not archive by 2GB achive.

W7 is always tidier and has fewer programmes running in compatability mode if clean installed. However plenty of people have successfully upgraded from vista. If you imaged the whole disk and the subsequent upgrade doesn't work as you wish delete the mess and reimage or agressively clean up the restored image and then start again. In saying that a clean installaton is tidier/quicker (pretty obvious) no-one has suggested the difference in performance still exists after a few months of usage.

As your drive is on its last legs pop open the cover for the HDD area to get some extra cooling in there and start backing up right away

 

Thanks for the reply... after nearly two hours, the macrium disc image completed. (I monitored the hdd temp with HD Tune, used a fan and an icepack under the drive and kept the temp to <54C!). When done I ran macrium's verification of back-up and image files and everything checked out OK. I also burned a Linux rescue cd on a dvd, which I am not exactly sure hot to use. And, it wasn't clear to me whether or not macrium free copies folders and files, so I ran the vista back-up also and that is still running now (about 2.5hours so far).

Now to get a new hdd that will be larger and run cooler, restore the disc image, restore the files and folders if necessary and then consider how to upgrade to win7.

 

By file and folder back up I meant literally copy and pasting folders for documents, pictures, music etc then the entire C:/users/you/appdata settings etc which gives you a usable back up of the files and place to migrate e-mail etc from without using the backup programme

Sounds like you have some more options open now so good luck with the upgrades

 

Everything that's on the disk makes it into the backup image. What Macrium means by that is that it doesn't let you back up only part of a disk without doing the whole thing.

 

Yeah, Not quite what I mean

My backup strategy is to ALSO copy most data/music/email stuff as simple plain old files, just like saving them to the external drive. In case of loss of the system or a prolonged repair this gives immediate access to important stuff on any other PC in the land and allows email files etc to be imported easily too.

Complete disk image is good for speed/compression but assumes a temporary machine has your backup software and can read individual files/quickly (not in my experience they don't). Also if your laptop fails and you get a new system the full disk restore probably won't run too well on different hardware - in fact it might not boot at all