new drive?

[maxwell_smart007]

I need a new harddrive - my old one is showing signs of fatigue...it's long in the tooth, and while I likely could use a new laptop, I think a new harddrive will suffice for now.

How would I clone a laptop harddrive onto the new one, so that I don't have any issues when I put the new drive into the laptop?

Thanks!

 

[magpens]

There are cloning programs that you can download for free. I never have done it on a laptop but I have on a desktop several times. I forget the exact name of the program but got it by doing a google search.

Doing it on a desktop, you mount both the old and the new drives and run the program.
Can you mount two harddrives on a laptop ? . I don't know.

I always disabled my internet connection during the cloning process.

I am assuming your machine runs Windows.

 

[randyrls]

Andrew; There are several ways to copy a hard drive. it depends on the relative sizes of the old and new drive. If the new drive is bigger, there usually isn't a problem. Unfortunately, you can't just copy the files.

BUT; it is very likely there isn't anything wrong with your drive! If there is enough free space, the simplest solution is:

1. BACKUP ALL THE FILES ON THE HARD DRIVE!
2. BACKUP ALL THE FILES ON THE HARD DRIVE!
3. BACKUP ALL THE FILES ON THE HARD DRIVE!
4. Run a full check disk on the drive.
5. Run The Defragment program on the drive.

Notice how many times I said to backup the drive??? It's that important!

Both EaseUS and CloneZilla (free) can copy hard drive to hard drive.

Laptops and drives pose a special problem. You need to connect BOTH drives to the same machine at the same time. You can connect some drives via a USB connection and drive handler like this one You also need to verify with the manual or manufacturer the largest HD that the machine can handle. This is important with laptops as the controller in the laptop may not support drives larger than "X".

Cautions: Don't do anything to the old drive for several months after the copy. Immediately after the copy test all programs to verify proper operations.

 

[Mr Vic]

I put a Seagate in my desktop about a month ago. Good price and the instructions come with a link to their software for cloning. Only hiccup was going from a 250gig to the 500 gig and I wasn't paying attention, ended with a 150 gig recovery partition and 350 gig data. Could have dumped it all and redid but will never use all of the drive anyway.