A Little Assistance Cloning Laptop Hard Drive

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Raz_Man

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I'm upgrading my old laptop HD to a new one & of course I'd prefer not to have re-install everything. I've built all my computers & am used to replacing & adding hard drives to them but I don't have any external hard drives & I don't have an enclosure for a laptop hard drive.

I've read many of the previous recommendations on how to clone one but I was wondering if there was a way & if it was possible for me to do this without having to buy anything extra?

I was thinking I could clone the Laptop Hard Drive to one of my PC Hard Drives & then Clone it to the New Laptop Drive but I didn't know if it would be bootable if I did that. I have a few different types of software I can use & if I need something else, I can get, & use that instead, if needed.

I have both the Laptop & the PC at the same location but I am able to connect to that laptop remotely using LogMeIn. So I would think it would work since it's my HD would be an external drive for the Laptop.

Any & all advice is welcome & appreciated.

P.S. I am running Win XP.

Thanks in advance!
Raz
 
You can NOT clone and old HD from an ancient machine, install it in a new laptop and expect it to work. All your hardware drivers will be different.

I suggest that you follow this procedure if you want to do this in the future:

1. Decide on how to organize your Hard Drive. Idea is a Drive or partition with just the OS on it so data, games and programs will not be affected when you wipe the OS partition to do a fresh install.

2. Let's assume you went:

C:\ = OS (128 GB)
D:\ = Games (512 GB
E:\ = Programs = 128 GB
F:\ = Data = Remainder

3. When you take your HD to a new machine or change OS's, simple format C:\ and install new OS and drivers. Everything else remains intact.

4. Some programs and games will require registry settings in the new OS. reinstall them over themselves which will leave all customizations, saved games etc intact.

As for your current situation, Id follow the procedure above, then connect the old HD and copy / paste what ya need to the appropriate location.
 

Raz_Man

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Thanks for the quick replies. I must not have made myself very clear though.

I am an experienced computer tech & know what I am doing as far as Computers go. I just haven't upgraded Laptops before.

I am NOT trying to clone an OLD HD from an ancient machine. I keep my pc's updated with new equipment as needed. Which is what I am doing now. All I am wanting to do is upgrade the original HD that came with the Dell Laptop, which is only 40M, to the new one I bought, which is 750M. If the Laptop wasn't currently working with the 40M HD, it has in it now, I would simply re-install everything instead of even asking about a way to clone it.

I'm not a noob ;)
 

mironso

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:), sorry for that but we must consider worst case.
If you know what are you doing and have experience, then is possible to use acronis or norton ghoust to create image of hdd to another hdd and then create a new hdd from that image and it will be bootable. Have tested it and it's working. Use Hirene's boot, there you have all programs needed.
Good luck.
 

Raz_Man

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No problem I understand.
I do know what I'm doing. I just haven't had a need or reason to do this before ;)
Anytime I've replaced drives I've always done fresh installs however in this case the Laptop HD has been running without any problems. The only issue is the size.
I have Norton Ghost & I downloaded acronis just in case I needed it. I've also got a recent copy of the Hiren's Boot CD (can't live without that).
There is one thing I need clarification on. I have plenty of HDD's in my main PC. I was planning on formatting one of those & hoping that I could clone the HDD from the Laptop to the HDD on my PC however, I wasn't sure first off if that could be done, & if so what was the easiest way to do it. Unfortunately I don't currently own an External HDD. I know that that would be the easiest & best way to do it if I did.
I do have the ability to remotely access the laptop. I also can use an Ethernet cable to connect the two, which I read was another possible way, if I'm not mistaken.

Thanks for all your help so far.
 

mironso

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Well, the easiest way, and by the way I would do this way (and doing that all the time), is to take out HDD from laptop (source, from now one), prepare new HDD (destination, from now one). Unplug all HDDs from your PC, plug just source and destination HDDs. Boot from CD using Hirene’s boot, start Norton ghost (for example), and directly clone HDD, with rearranging size of partitions. After it’s done, just put destination into laptop, boot from new HDD and everything should work OK. I done this process many times, and every time it was successful.
 
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