Migrate to new hard drive

Hi,

I am interested in buying a faster hard drive for my laptop (G1S).

My plan is to order the hard driver, and find a way to copy the image currently on my hard drive to the new one so that I can put in the new hard drive and boot to it as if it was this one. Then I will format the old one and use it as an external USB hard drive.

Does this sound possible? Before I buy the drive I need to make sure it's possible so I don't end up having to install windows on the new drive rather than copying the whole image (like ghost).

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

 

Did it this morning...there are several ways to accomplish it, but it depends on what hardware and software you have available.

This way will work for sure

Download acronis workstation
http://www.acronis.com/enterprise/download/

Install it on another computer

Buy your enclosure---make sure it supports sata notebook drives as I am pretty certain that is the drive type you have.

Remove the laptop drive from asus, and put it in the enclosure, the connect it to the machine with acronis on it

clone it/image it to an image.

Disconnect. Remove old drive, then Put the new drive in the enclosure

Reconnect. Image the drive back to the new drive...automatic mode will resize the drive partitions proportionately to larger drive, but you can manually alter things if you like...think the asus drive has a regular partition and restore partition--no reason to make the restore partition any larger.

Disconnect

Put the new drive in the laptop and you're done.

(now put in the old drive and format it)

 

Sweet, thanks, I think that would work for me. One question, does the other laptop have to have esata or will usb work?

 

you misunderstand me--the drive itself is a serial ata drive--your harddrive enclosure (for the transfer and for making the old drive an external storage unit) needs to support SATA drives.

The enclosure will hook up to your computer via usb or firewire (and some hook up using e-sata, but I am unaware of any laptops that support this, so you do not want that.

For example, this drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182033
supports 2.5 inch ide drives
It hooks up to your computer with a usb cable


This drive
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817193029supports 2.5 inch SATA drives
It hooks up to your computer with a usb cable

The current laptop G1S harddrives are SATA drives that will ONLY go into an enclosure that supports SATA drives. The new drive you need to buy needs to be an SATA drive as well.

Perhaps the first G1S laptops supported EIDE drives, but I don't think so

 

No, I understood you. The question not about the internal connection, but with the external connection. Will the acronis software work with usb only or will esata work.

I think a better option for me would be a boot disk of some kind that I can put in my current laptop with current windows installed drive, that will copy the whole image to a USB or esata connected drive, allowing me to boot to the other one with all my data. The reason is because I have about 80GB of data on here so an image file on another computer might not fit.

 

Apricorn is a nice image copier too. Uses an external for new drive and copies an exact image of your old one to the new one. All you have to do is swap the drives. Pretty EZ. Cnet also has a video guide to this somewhere.

http://www.amazon.com/Apricorn-Upgr...6?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1185918797&sr=8-1

 

It works with usb or esata given the method I suggested (see last parapgraph)

Acronis will make a boot disk, but it will not always work with every external drive, hence why I suggest the other method

You can use Acronis to copy to an external drive if it works in one step (from working windows to an external drive with new drive using boot disk), but that only works most of the time.

It is done in one step, and is quicker, but sometimes it runs into a problem with external drives...that is why I suggested the first method as something that ALWAYS works

Since you are buying an external enclosure for the old drive, its only one more step and it saves you the headache of trying to get something to work if it fails on your particular harddrive or you coming back and asking a bunch f questions

Using the method suggested, it uses the known good windows usb driver from with in windows and it ALWAYS works flawlessly

If you want to try it another way, you can save yourself a whole 15-30 minutes, but you might end up doing it the long way anyway.

 

Personally, I just used my USB enclosure and Linux with dd and ntfsresize. But I'm a 1337 h4x0r and didn't want to pay anything for my software

 

Well, I will sidestep as you walk by with /\/\4D 5k1llz

 

Naah. I just wanted to let you know that the option was open, if you wanted me to 'splain more. It's a bit more complicated, but it's free, and kinda fun if you're into that kind of thing

 

So was my suggestion (trial acronis=free); and buying a usb enclosure---as did you, but he is going to use it anyway.

Sadly, 1337 h4x0rs always feel the need to do things the hard way just to show they can do it. Want to impress me? Remove the required platters from the old drive and put them in a new drive and make it all work

Then we will call you a 1337 h4x0r...

 

Heh

After looking at new hard drives, I don't see what I had expected, so I might stick with what I have for now. I want this drive but it doesn't seem to be for sale anywhere yet.