The mechanics of upgrading to a larger hard drive.

I am planning to upgrade to a larger hard drive (I have R60, shown in my sig.). I am using Acronis True Image Home, and wondering whether I need to purchase a hard drive enclosure.

Will the following procedure work?

1. Back up my entirety of the old hard drive into an external hard drive (with one *.tib file)

2. Take out the old hard drive, put a new one in the laptop, and boot up with the Acronis Rescue disk.

3. Restore the TIB file in the external hard drive on to the new hard drive.

Wouldn't that do it? I have a feeling it wouldn't but I want to make sure.

Thanks.

Ken.

 

Yes, that will work just fine; that's exactly the procedure I use.

 

Would that transfer, not only the data, but all the programs and settings and all that? I've read that the way to do it is to put the new hard drive in a usb hard drive enclosure and "clone" the old hard drive onto the new one. I am wondering if my way would also get me an exact copy of the old one, except larger....

 

You should check the specs on Acronis to see if restoring a complete backup also restores partition size or not. In any event, if it creates a partition that is the same size as the old partition on the smaller drive, using Acronis to subsequently expand the size of that partition into the new, larger drive is a very easy task.

 

Thanks, Shyster1. I am afraid that all I know how to do with Acronis is really back up and restore. I've just learned about "clone" function of it. I would not know where to start on "checking the specs" or how to "expand" the size of existing partition using Acronis.... but I guess I will eventually figure it out by trial and error. As long as what I do does not destroy the new hard drive beyond a quick and easy repair...

 

A caveat or two before you begin

test your external drive with the acronis rescue disk first--acronis' rescue disk does not work with all external drives.

Whether you choose to clone the disk or create an image and then restore, use the Vista disk management tool to expand the drive after inserting the new drive in the computer and booting Windows for the first time.

Vista uses a non-standard partition structure that depending on what version of partition manager you use could render your OS unbootable. This only applies if the partitions were created by vista--not if the partitions were created by some other program or you did an XP update.

Non-standard? you ask. Why?

Future proofing.

The old partition structure dates back more than a decade and Vista's new partition structure is designed for future operating systems

 

Thanks to all those responded!

 

I used Seagate Disc Wizard which is ATI and cloned my internal HDD to the new one in a enclosure, then switched them out. I put the old HDD into the enclosure and had an external HDD that I use for back ups of the OS. I use another WD external HDD for my documents.

I think I only paid $20 for the enclosure, it was well worth it. Here's a bunch from $10-25

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2000090092 4093&name=$10 - $25

PS I went from a 60GB to a 120GB HDD and it doubled the partitions, including the diagnostics partition which was a little bit of wasted space. Later I resized the partitions using gparted shrinking the C drive OS (XP) to 30GB and leaving more room for data. .