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    New HD Install Questions(s)

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by mfox76, Feb 16, 2009.

  1. mfox76

    mfox76 Notebook Consultant

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    I have one of the new 7200.4 Seagate drives on its way...and I have a few questions on the best way to install/setup.

    First, I am currently using a 250gb WD2500BEV, I have a second Hard drive Bay on my Laptop, but I will not be keeping the original drive (giving it to the woman to swap out her old 60 gb drive).

    Ok My question...First its an oem drive...so are there any cables/parts I am going to need?

    ok, now on the setup...whats the best way to go to transfer over my whole system as is to the new drive? I just installed vista 64 two weeks ago so I am dreading another OS install on the new drive.

    So if I wanted to avoid that...I should just clone my current drive correct? If so whats the best free program? Are there any special caveats I should know? Would I just install the new drive in the second Bay, format and then use the cloning software to set up the new drive with my current OS Partition?

    Conversly, If I decided to do a fresh install...is it possible to mount the second drive, I could just mount it, install vista, and boot to the new drive instead of the old drive?
     
    mfox76, Feb 16, 2009
    #1
  2. Commander Wolf

    Commander Wolf can i haz broadwell?

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    You should not need need any extra parts that you don't already have. Typically most HDD setups will have the actual HDD, an HDD caddy, and an interposer between the HDD connectors and the actual connectors on the laptop.

    If you have two bays (which you seem to imply), you probably only have a caddy and interposer for one drive, so you may not be able to install the second drive at the same time without another caddy and interposer.

    I think Acronis is generally considered to be the best imaging software, but I've never used it myself. I've been using a free program called Drive Image XML which seems to work fine but can be a bit fiddly. You will need to partition your drive before loading a drive image onto it, but this can be done in Windows.
     
    Commander Wolf, Feb 16, 2009
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