Replacing my hard drive later...

on my sony vaio f series notebook. I keep getting "SMART failure predicted on hard disk" message everytime I reboot. And the laptop on any user name is acting very slow. I tried recovering to factory settings and keep getting the message so later I will buy the Seagate - Momentus 500GB Internal Serial ATA 7200 rpm Hard Drive.

My question is that I have 3 dvd recovery disks I made when first purchased the laptop about 1 1/2 years ago. I'm hoping this will be all I need to get back my system? Also once I'm back up can someone recommend free partition tools as I'd like to try windows 8? I usually install ubuntu on its own partition as well but the wubi installer helps you do this easily. I'm looking for a more trusted freeware tool I could try.

And please feel free to mention any other tools I can use to manage my new hard drive for frequent backups or health checks etc.

Thanks in advance, hoping that new hard drive works nice.

 

If you're wanting to try out Windows 8, just subtract 20 or so GB from your drive when you're reinstalling Windows 7...

Oh, recovery disc, see if you can download a clean ISO and use the key that came with your laptop, or backup the preinstalled key and reactivate with that, then go get all the drivers for your laptop.

Edit: probably useless at this point, but you have a backup right? You should go do that now

 

What kind of back up? Like of certain directories? I do have that.

I ended up getting the seagate momentus xt 500gb hybrid model, and so far so good. Any tools I can use to test benchmark? Check on health? Maybe widgets as well?

Thanks.

 

CrystalDiskInfo is what I use for checking drive statistics, but you can use CrystalDiskMark for benchmarking if you really want to: Crystal Dew World

There's HD Tune as well, bu I don't remember that one being free (I don't run benchmarking software too much so I don't know how many different programs there are for it...)

 

Thanks, how about now that I've recovered back to windows 7 factory settings which is what I wanted, how can I use a partition tool to set up space for another OS like Windows 8? Like if I dont like it I just format it or delete it somehow? Is there such a tool? Sorry but I'm definitely new in this area.

 

Windows has a built in partitioning tool. Open the start menu, right click on computer and select manage. From there go into disk management and you can use the shrink volume option on your main partition to create another one for windows 8. Other than that, you could use a live cd tool like parted magic or gparted. Window's disk management utility is fine when working with NTFS though.

I'm guessing you could use diskpart via command line too if you're feeling old school.

Also don't forget that for windows 1GB = 1024MB.

 

Ah cool, so once I create the new partition and download the windows 8 beta iso. How do I install it to the new partition? So I have the option when the notebook boots up to boot into windows?

 

Once you download the iso, it will have you create the install on some sort of bootable media (jump drive, cd, etc). When you go through the install, you will see both partitions. Make sure you install the the new partition and not the old otherwise it will overwrite your current setup.