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    HD Upgrade. 2006 Sony Vaio FJ

    Discussion in 'VAIO / Sony' started by doncarlos, Sep 20, 2010.

  1. doncarlos

    doncarlos Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hello,

    Long, but I appreciate if you bear with me.

    PC: 2006 Sony Vaio VGN FJ290 laptop, presently has an 80GB/5400 factory HD. Old and now slooooow. Moved a lot of stuff off it and increased the ram....it's just an old drive that I think will inevitably fail.

    I want to upgrade the hard drive to a larger and faster drive, 7200/16 mb, as a present to my wife, who flat refuses to get another pc. LOL. Not sure why.

    -No XP OS disc came with the system when originally purchased new in 2006

    -I do have an empty external 2.5 USB enclosure that I can use.

    Q: Can I do this?

    a) Put the new hard drive in the enclosure, format it from the Vaio.
    b)Clone the entire old drive, to the new drive that's in the enclosure.
    c) Remove and install the new drive into the Vaio.

    Sounds too simple.

    Q: Now installed in the Vaio, will the new clone drive boot and operate with no further tweaking?

    Q: Again, the original system never came with an XP CD. So am I to assume that the clone will copy the XP OS as well and the boot files?

    Q: If this will work, what cloning software (free or not) would work? Any tips on doing this or is this pretty much follow the software prompts.

    Q: If the above method of swapping the drives is not the way, then how on earth do I make a usuable copy of the XP OS that will boot on a blank drive? Is the issue with XP that if a bootable cd copy of the OS is created by that computer then that computer will recognize it, so it is usable?

    I know a lot of questions. And I do appreciate you reading this. I am not a tech person at all and am limited to my experience of upgrading drives in my mac, but in that case(s) I used time capsule in a large 3.5 external and had a SL DVD OS if needed, so it was pretty straightforward, install new drive, boot to external, time capsule to new drive.

    You comments, suggestions, input, will be greatly appreciated, I don't always ask the right question so feel free to enlighten me.

    Regards
    DonCarlos
     
    doncarlos, Sep 20, 2010
    #1