[Solved] Replacing existing drive with new larger one by cloning, need help please

[highland hippie]

Hello All

 

I currently have a medion notebook that I have had for ages and it works a treat, I have a 40 gig drive that is partitioned into three. I am running out of room on the drive and want to replace it with something nearer to 100 or 200 gig. It is a TB-3.5 inch IDE drive and I am hoping the manufacturers will tell me the model to replace it with.

 

What I want to do is clone the drive and save the cloned copy to an external HDD I have, and then replace the drive with the newer larger one. My machine has loads of stuff I want to keep as wll as some stuff I dont still have discs for to be able to re install. I dont think I even have the windows XP home OS disc.

 

Can I clone the drive and then when the new one is in just copy the cloned disc from the external HDD onto the new one in the notebook. Or do I need to do something else? I am confused as to how I can operate the machine if the drive is inserted and has no data on it. I was wondering if I need to go into the notebook BIOS and adjust it so that I can load the cloned copy using the external HDD over USB.

 

Any assistance would be very welcome and feel free to use as much detail as is necessary if it will help me to sort this out.

 

Many thanks in advance

HH

[Plastic Nev]

Hi, you are describing exactly the same thing I did with my old Toshiba laptop, so I can definitely say it is possible.

 

First you will need to download a cloning or imaging program, there are a few about that are free or at least simpler free versions of the more complex paid for versions, and you will need room on the existing C drive to install it on.

 

Myself and KenB have used a very good free version of Macrium Reflect. KenB has a full tutorial available if you wish to use that one, though as I say there are others, EasUS do a good one too.

 

Once you have downloaded and installed the program of your choice, you first make sure the external hard drive is plugged in and working, then open the Imaging program, depending on which you use, follow instructions for creating a complete image of the notebooks hard drive and for the image to be copied to the external hard drive.

In all cases you will also need to create a boot disk, this is an operating system in miniature that the notebook can boot from once the new bigger hard drive is fitted. In the Macrium reflect, the program will do that for you, and if using the Macrium, I recommend downloading and creating a disk using the Windows PE environment rather than the Linux one, it is much better, though a big download so will take time depending on your available download speeds.

You then remove the old small hard drive and fit the new larger one, then turn it on and get to the boot choices menu to make the BIOS boot from the CD/DVD drive and boot disk first, quite often BIOS systems will boot from the CD/DVD drive as first choice by default, but not always, so it must be checked that the CD/DVD drive is first choice.

Also make sure the external hard drive is connected and the boot disk is in the disk drive. Follow instructions either from the maker of the imaging program or if using Macrium Reflect, KenB's tutorial.

 

It does take some time to both create the image onto the external hard drive, and later to put that image onto the new hard drive, as well as downloading and creating the boot disk, so make sure you have a good few hours to spare.

 

Once the image is installed onto the new hard drive, the new hard drive will be partitioned exactly the same as the old one was, so the extra space on the new hard drive will be unallocated, you will then need to expand the partitions to use the unallocated bit. Windows own partition tools is a bit limited so a good one I found is the EasUS free version Partition Master Home Edition, ask if you need a link for that.

 

First a link to KenB's tutorial for creating the image in Macrium Reflect=

 

http://s13.zetaboards.com/kenspchelp/topic/6963042/1/#new

 

Secondly, the link for using that image to reinstall it onto your new hard drive=

 

http://s13.zetaboards.com/kenspchelp/topic/6963046/1/#new

 

In the second tutorial he mentions at first the need to create the rescue or boot disk. Although the Linux one may work for you, in my case it would not, for whatever reason it couldn't find my external hard drive, even though it was connected and fully functional. The Windows PE disk did do though, hence why I recommended it earlier.

 

These imaging programs are originally designed to be a full backup, should anything major go wrong, so replacing a complete hard drive as you intend is just the same thing.

So I also recommend creating regularly an image of the current state of your computer at any time after replacing the hard drive, as a just in case thing.

If doing so and wishing to maintain an order one thing I must mention.

Macrium issue program updates from time to time, but an image created with a newer version will not work with an older version rescue or boot disk. I reckon it is simpler to not allow updates, as otherwise it then means creating new rescue or boot disks every time the program is updated.

 

Nev.

[highland hippie]

Hi Plastic Nev

Many thanks for the detailed reply. I have Avanquest perfect image 12 installed on my laptop so will be using that (I think). I am not sure how to make a boot disc, and I have not heard of the PE environment. Can I make a boot disc using my imaging software or is that what the PE environment is for?

 

I have a good sized external drive to put the clone onto, so once I am sorted with the boot disc I plan to spend some time over the weekend organising things.

One thing that is puzzling me somewhat is that my spec for the notebook says it has a 3.5 inch IDE drive in but I can only find 2.5 drives for laptops on Ebay.

I will have to open it up to check but it seemed a little odd to have this size for a notebook. Presumably if it is 3.5 then I will have a bit more choice providing I can find one that is 9.5 mm thick, still I better check it first.

I am very grateful for the assistance and will do a check on my drive and hopefully get back to you with a definate rather than a guess>

Regards

 

HH

[Plastic Nev]

Hi HH, I don't know that make of imaging software, however after a look on their website here=

 

http://www.avanquest.com/UK/software/perfect-image-12-122667

 

I found "Perfect Image includes a powerful recovery CD." You just need to find it if you already created one, or if it came with one. Or find out how to create one, as something will be needed to work from to install the image onto a clean new drive.

 

Nev.

[highland hippie]

Hi Plastic Nev

 

I will make a recovery disc and then follow your instructions from the previous post. I need to get a drive first but once that is here I will get started.

Many thanks for the help

regards

HH

[Plastic Nev]

HI HH, thanks for the update, please let us know how you get on with it, and if any problems do come back and ask.

 

Nev.

[Synapse]

Can I clone the drive and then when the new one is in just copy the cloned disc from the external HDD onto the new one in the notebook

 

I've used Macrium Reflect recently, the way I cloned my drive was to put the new drive in a USB caddy, run Macrium on the old drive, and tell it to clone the full running drive to the new one in the caddy.

 

Macrium locks the old drive state, clones it and then you can swap it over and boot from the new one.

 

Windows installs a driver or two and restarts to complete the swap.

 

Then you use Easeus Partition Manager to tinker with the partitions on the new larger drive.

 

Thought it worth a mention as an alternative solution.

[Plastic Nev]

Very good point Synapse, when I did it I didn't have a caddy or enclosure at the time that I could use. However once I had the new large drive fitted and running I realised I had a small drive that could be used as an external for small stuff, so then bought a caddy for it.

 

So what I am saying is to go buy a caddy now, follow the way Synapse described, then you can put the old small drive into the caddy, reformat it, and then you have a spare small external drive for storing stuff that you don't actually need to be on the main computer drive.

 

Nev.

[highland hippie]

Hi Plastic nev

 

Just a quick question. I have cloned the old laptop drive to a drive that is double the size of the existing one (now 80GB) I did so with a proportional allocation of the drives so I am hoping the two existing drives (20gb each) should now occupy 40 Gb each. I have a recovery disc that I can use once the new drive is installed into the laptop. the question is this, do I run the recovery disc and then somehow install the cloned drive onto the new laptop drive or will the laptop run up to a point from the recovery disc and then prompt me to Install,Copy or Transfer the cloned drive to the new laptop drive?

 

Having never done this before I am unaware of the way to get the cloned disc onto the new empty drive. I assume I must first also run from CMD prompt to format the new drive from disc management etc.

 

As before many thanks for the help.

Regards

 

HH

[Plastic Nev]

Hi, first fit the new drive, next is power on and open the disk drive drawer to put the disk in, also access the bios to make it see and boot from the disk drive next time it is restarted. Shut down, then plug in the external hard drive and restart, if you got the boot priority right it will boot from the disk, you then navigate through to find the external drive and then the cloned copy that is on it, there should be some instruction or similar for what you click next to copy the clone onto the laptop's new drive, it may also reformat that drive first as an automatic thing so saving you from doing that manually.

 

Not knowing the software you are using I can only generalise of course, however it should go in the way I describe in a general sort of fashion.

 

Nev.

[highland hippie]

Hi Plastic Nev and Synapse

as ever many thanks for the assistance. I am in the process of getting a drive today and if I am lucky it will come with a cady too. I will get started on things this week and report back.

 

Hapy Bank holidays

 

HH

[highland hippie]

Hello All

 

Well after a bit of faffing around and a couple of clones of my original drive, I have now got a HDD twice the size of the original and it is working a treat. I am now planning to clone my drives on two other machines I have in readyness for changing the drives to SSD if possible.

 

Many thanks for the help and advice and I wil of course chip in to help anyone else if I am able to.

 

Great forum and great help

 

regards

HH

[Plastic Nev]

OK, good to hear all is now OK and the new larger drive running well.

Best of luck with the other machines, any problems you know where we are and only too glad to help.

 

Nev.

[highland hippie]

Hi Plastic Nev

 

Many thanks

 

Regards

 

HH