How hard is it to transfer a hard drive?

I am about to order a W510 (as soon as the FHD monitors become available) and want to upgrade the hard drive to a SSD. Lenovo only offers the Samsung 128gb model and I would like the 160gb Intel.

How difficult is it to swap and transfer hard drives? Lenovo said it won't void my warranty, so I just need to figure out if this is something I am capable of doing.

 

It is very simple to replace drives in Lenovo ThinkPad systems. The notebook should come with a booklet that describes it. But you can also find videos for servicing various Lenovo ThinkPad systems here:

http://www.lenovoservicetraining.com/ion/

For the T510/W510, the exact URL is: http://www.lenovoservicetraining.com/ion/W510/index.html - check under CRU (Customer Replaceable Units) for hard disks.

Here you will see a video demonstration on how to take out the old and put in the new HDD. It should be fairly easy. (you can also watch videos for replacing other user serviceable parts)

As for transferring your things over to the new one: if you switch the drive right away, you will probably have no data to transfer. In this case, just burn the recovery media to DVDs and then restore it to the SSD once you have it replaced.

 

Thanks my question was more geared towards how to transfer the data from one hard drive to the other. Physically replacing the drive is the easy part.

 

As I said, if you just need to restore the system to the state you receive it in, you can use the recovery media you burn to reinstall the system. Or you might do a clean install.

If you need to transfer a "working system", partitions, data, etc. you will need a tool for creating image of the running system, and restoring that to the new system. You can store this image on an external USB drive, for example.

For this, you can use Acronis True Image. I have not used it, but have seen it recommended by many here on the forums.

For some types of SSD, you might get a package that includes a transfer software. Amongst others, Kingston has some packages here in Finland that include program to transfer existing drive contents to new SSD drive.

You could use the built in tools of Windows 7 to create an image of the entire drive and restore to another. This is obviosly not as full featured as third party solutions, but it does work. This was also supported in Vista (in fact I used Vista to transfer from default 160Gb drive to my current 320Gb drive). For this you will require a Windows 7 installation disc (this will not work with recovery media). And I am not sure, but I think you will also need Professional or better Windows 7 (Ultimate, Enterprise).

 

I find that Symantec Backup Exec System recovery / Norton Ghost does a really great job of this... You can backup your system by physical disk or partition. Later, you can restore it onto different hardware or open it up as a virtual machine, or even just use the image browser to go in and extract files. It gives you the absoulte most flexibility in terms of options.

L.

 

I think you can just use Rescue and Recovery to create a image to USB hard disk first and then restore this to new hard drive. Does not this copy the entire image of the hard disk to the new one? Any thought?

Sagar

 

I will probably do this when the system is brand new. Does Lenovo not ship computers with recovery disks? Has anyone posted instructions to do something like this before?

 

I am trying to do the same thing right now. (Have a newly bought machine, trying to transfer the complete factory-set disc image to another hard drive (for bigger capacity)).
I am following this (using the "Create Recovery Media" function), and I hope it works... will update soon

 

You don't need to restore to the factory set image though. Why don't you make a image backup just before you do the change and restore your new hard drive with this image? Let me know what you think about this?

 

a) Make an Vista or Win7 (all versions) image backup of everything from your present internal HDD to an external HDD
b) make the rescue CD,
c) Replace your present HDD with the new (pre-formatted) one,
d) boot with the rescue CD, and follow instructions to image back to from the external HDD to the new internal HDD.
e) reboot with new HDD and everything as it was
f) if HDD is different from the old, this will be detected and and a further reboot will happen
g) if new HDD is bigger, use built-in partition manager to include extra room
h) is the new "drive" is an SSD, more system setting changes may be needed for top performance

However I would always have a year zero second option in case of ever possible disaster:
1) save an non-archived exact copy of all your personal files onto the external HDD, (the free microsoft "synctoy" is best backup software around, IMHO)
2) have a copy of your Lenovo rescue CD/DVD's (gives factory settings, sans personally installed software and system settings, sans updates since factory settings, and sans personal files)

The image method should work, though.

 

FYI: I used the "Create Recovery Media" option, and it was a very smooth process. I highly recommend it if you just want to start from scratch, the way it came from Lenovo, on a new hard drive.

 

I just went through this - My $.02.

While ghosting an restoring should work, it is probably easiest just to reinstall windows from scratch. Windows 7 installed onto my new SSD in under 20 minutes. You can then pop your old drive into something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...cm_re=sata_adapter_2.5-_-17-824-001-_-Product and pull any old data off of it that you need.

When you're done, reformat your old drive and you have a cheap, external drive that can be used for backups.

 

I plan on doing this the same time I receive the computer, so it sounds easiest to just install the SSD before I ever boot the machine and then install windows from the win7 disks that come with the machine.

What is the best way to go about getting all of the drivers? Do they come on a disk with Lenovo machines?

 

The machine is not shipped with Win7 disks. That's why you need to boot the computer and then make the recovery disk set first. You can do this without installing any other software or putting any data on the machine. The Thinkvantage software will already be on there, and that's what you need to make the recovery CDs.

Once you have the recovery CDs, then you can shut down and replace the drive.

If you purchased any pre-installed software, such as Norton or Office, you'll either need to make a backup of the drive the system shipped with, or install the original internal drive in the ultrabay using the hard drive bay adapter, so you can get access to the other software in order to install it once your SSD is installed where you want it.

 

Thanks, will Lenovo ship systems with the cds if you ask/pay?

 

They used to, but this is not currently offered on their web site as part of configuring the system. I think it's possible to download the images from the Lenovo support site, but this might not be the equivalent of a recovery disk you make yourself: for example, it might not have all the right drivers for the accessories you ordered on your system. And you still have to burn the CDs anyway. So it's easiest to roll your own, I think.

 

So how do I go about making recovery disks? Do you make one for the OS and one for drivers?

Thanks again everyone for all of the help.

 

You can search for "Create Recovery Media" in the start menu. For me, it created 1 boot disk and 2 "data" discs (I suppose the boot disc contains the recovery software, and the data discs contain an image of the OS including drivers).

 

da problum wit your method is you lose the recovery partition.

 

I just spoke with Lenovo tech support and they said any aftermarket SSD will not have the Lenovo hard drive firmware and every time I boot the machine it will say this is not a recognized Lenovo hard drive. Has anyone had this problem? Is there a way around it?

 

that is not what i have found. a third-party SSD will come with its own firmware (often upgradeable from their own web sites). lenovo just doesn't support third-party SSD's in any way, including firmware. when the machine boots up the first time with the new SSD it will detect it, and ask for a reboot. then it should be fine. fine? what am i saying? it will be awesome...

 

What I don't understand about this approach with Rescue and Recovery is: will it create on the primary hard drive a rescue partition? In other words, if I want to have a T510 with a 160GB Intel G2 SSD that would be identical to how it would ship from Lenovo if Lenovo stocked that SSD drive, can I swap the drives and use Rescue and Recovery to do this? Will it automatically set up the right partitions on the SSD so it works just like it would have worked coming from Lenovo?

 

But will it say I have a non-Lenovo HD every time I boot? That is what the tech said.

 

I've never seen that message on mine. Where does the tech say it would be displayed? With the SSD, the BOIS screen isn't up long enough to read anything, anyway.

 

In my experience (switched out a 100GB HDD for a 160GB), the Recovery discs created 3 partitions:
- "SYSTEM_DRV", ~2GB
- "Lenovo_Reco", ~10GB
- "Windows7_OS", the remainder of the drive
My understanding is that SYSTEM_DRV and Lenovo_Reco are both rescue partitions. (guessing that the former has the boot recovery software and the latter is the data, but 2 GB seems like a lot for boot software?)

 

From what I understand, what you need to do is "clone" your hard drive. Acronis does this pretty well, but you have to pay for it. There are couple other free software that do that as well. I'm not 100% sure though, and I've to do the same thing once I get my T510. If anyone else has had experience with cloning the HDD, please help us out. Thanks.

 

Didn't say, just said you would have to hit escape to continue the bootup.

 

The lenovo guy is IMHO incorrect. I have been using a self-installed third party SSD for 9 months now. Never seen such a message. Never needed to press escape during boot. It would be interesting to know exactly what he is talking about. Maybe some other issue?

 

No need for to pay for Acronis for a simple clone/image to external HHD of your whole HDD or SSD. Acronis is excellent if you wish to do more sophisticated things like incremental images and ongoing backups, etc. I have used both Acronis and the built-in Win7 imaging and rescue procedure several times with single and multiple partitions, with perfect results.

Like Acronis, the Win7 recovery procedure includes the creation of a Rescue CD to boot into the recovery operation.
You can even recover to quite a different HDD or SSD

I don't bother with the Lenovo recovery partitions. For me I would much rather use a rescue image from an external HHD every time. It saves a lot of time; a lot of space - which for a 120GB HDD is substantial - and consider so many small partitions annoying for data security management purposes (i.e backups and imaging). If you don't have an external HDD to image and mirror things to, then the Lenovo partitons should definitely be used.

To supplement the occasional creation of an image of the total system I create and manage backups and incrementally synchronize data files and directories with a mirror copy. To do this I use the brilliant Microsoft backup utility Synctoy ( http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...36-98e0-4ee9-a7c5-98d0592d8c52&displaylang=en).

 

Ok, that helps and makes a lot of sense. Thanks. My laptop should be here soon, will post the results.

 

I swapped the 240gb 5400rpm drive I received with my new T510 with a Hitachi 500gb 7200rpm drive. I used Clonezilla and in less than 45 minutes, it cloned the whole thing with all the sectors and partitions intact. I'm not using the Hitachi drive. Clonezilla will ask a lot of questions, just read carefully but it's pretty straightforward and easy.