Upgrading Laptop HD, cloning and installation. PLEASE HELP.

So i decided i needed a larger Hard drive(HD) on my Dell XPS-M1530.Im runing Windows Vista home premium. When i bought it about a year ago it came with a Seagate Momentus 120g HD, 5400.
I looked on newegg and found

---Western Digital Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Notebook Hard Drive

i also bought

---Rosewill RX81U-ES-25A 2.5" SATA to USB 2.0 External Enclosure.

Turns out that the Rosewill enclosure i bought was only compatable with HD's at or under 250gb, so i went to best buy and picked up

---Rocketfish™ - USB 2.0/eSATA Hard Drive Enclosure Kit for 2.5" SATA Hard Drives.

This is compatable with HD's up to 500gb.

I installed the new HD into the eclosure and plugged the USB into my laptop. The HD was not recognized.I looked online for answers and didnt find any real answers. from what i could gather i figured i neede to format the new HD. these are the steps i took.


Left click windows>right click “computer”>left click “manage”
Computer management screen pops up
Left click “Disk Management” on the left column
In middle column it shows Disk 0(C : )(Original HD) , Disk1(E : )(new external HD) and CD-ROM 0(D : )

after reaching this point i was unsure of what to do so i went with my instict and went with

Right clicked on Disk1(E : )>Format> volume label=”new volume”, File System=”NTFS”, and allocation unit size set to “default”.

It then began formating.

After the formating the new HD did show up when i clicked on my computer.

I looked online again on how to clone my old HD on to my new one.

I found a video on youtube from Tinkernut that sugested i use DriveImage XML.(if you type "clone a hard drive" in the youtube search engine its the first one) I followed the steps from the video exactly and i assumed my clones HD was done. I then replaced the old HD with my new one and powered up.

the Sell screen comes up as usual and the i get a message that says:

"No bootable devices--Strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for set up Utility
Press F5 to ru onboard diagnostics."

Now im stuck.

What did i do wrong? did i miss a step?

Things i think i did wrong.
-was i supposed to format the new HD? If i was did i do it how i was supposed to?

-was i supposed to download a drive or something and if so from where and how?

-Is there a better way or program to clone my HD?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

I believe you need to set the new Harddrive as the main boot device in the Bios.

basically you had 'Seagate Momentus' as your primary boot device which no longer exists and had the DVD drive as second boot device, which had no disk to boot from, so it came up as no boot device detected.

you will have to find the Western Digital in the bios and set it as the first boot device

Hope this helps

also, I have a question about the WD3200BEKT, does it have a free-fall sensor in it? or is that a different model?

 

TonyZ

I have a Seagate 7200.3 320GB Drive with the free fall sensor
I think seagate calls it g-force protection

Alex

 

See the quick guide to cloning. You can also use the trial version of Casper. It's fully functional except for partition resizing, which you can do with Vista's disk management.

You don't need to format the HDD prior to cloning. The cloning software should handle that task.

John

 

Don't know it it's any help but that is incorrect. A 2.5" SATA enclosure will support upto 500GB now. There isn't any limit other than the limits of the hard drive.

For your questions I recommend Acronis True Image and following John's advice.

 

TonZ

How do i set the new Hard drive as the main boot device in the Bios?
and no, the one i have does not have that sensor.

 

How do i set the new Harddrive as the main boot device in the Bios?

 

so i tried using the casper trial as suggested but it gives me an error right as its preparing to start copying. so i cloned my hard drive using DriveImage XML. i made the copy but when i put the new HD into my laptop it cant boot to it. How do i make the computer boot to the new HD?

 

should have used acronis true image, it would hae made the disk fully bootable and it would have taken bout 30 mins to do the whole cloning procedure.

 

To make your laptop boot from your new hd (which should solve your problem), keep pressing f12 (or delete, it should say in the boot screen what to press to enter setup) while the laptop is booting, then in the BIOS setup find a tab/window for boot device priority, and you should see a list with your new hd and CD drive in it, select your new hd and move it to the top of the list.

Hope that helps, can't be more specific because different BIOSes have different setup screens.

 

Well i tried goin into the BIOS and telling my system to boot fromt the internal HD, but that didnt work either. Im not sure, but i think it's because i used Driveimage XML. i will now use Acronis as suggested my Dannylill1981. im assuming u can use the free trial fro this. if so which one do i use. Acronis True Image Home 2009 or Acronis Migrate East 7.0. any input is appreciated.