Best way to swap hard drives?

FlyingHigh85 · Sep 10, 2013

I have two laptops. The first is a Sony Vaio with a 500GB HDD. The second is a Dell Inspiron N7110 with a 250GB HDD. I am going to sell the Vaio and keep the Inspiron. Before I do, I would like to swap hard drives so that I keep the larger HDD. Both laptops have Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) with valid product keys and both are less than two years old.

What would be the easiest way to swap these hard drives? Clone them using software like Clonezilla?

Before I sell the Vaio, I will probably do a fresh install of the OS and I don't have much data on the Inspiron, so should I just swap the hard drives and do a fresh install of Win 7 on both of them from a bootable DVD?

Guest · Sep 10, 2013

check first if the connectors of your two laptops are compatible

Y0GI · Sep 10, 2013

FlyingHigh85 :

Assuming that the connectors are compatible, a fresh install is almost always preferred.

Yogi

popatim · Sep 10, 2013

you will need an external drive to make images of the drives. Each drive has its own restore partition and perhaps a diagnostics partition that should stay with the correct laptop.

FlyingHigh85 · Sep 10, 2013

The 250GB hard drive is a Western Digital WD2500BEVT. The 500GB hard drive is a Seagate ST9500325AS. The interface for both of them is listed as SATA 3.0Gbps.

I've never swapped drives in a computer or installed a new one. So all I need to do is physically swap the hard drives from one laptop to another and set both to boot from the optical drive with the DVD that has the Win 7 Home Prem iso?

FlyingHigh85 · Sep 10, 2013

popatim :

I don't think either of them are partitioned. When I go to "Start"-->"Computer," there is only one "Hard Disk Drive" listed, the "Local Disk (C)." I don't think there is a restore or diagnostics partition.

I know for a fact that the HDD in the Inspiron has already been swapped out. It was built in Jan 2012 with a 640GB HDD and I bought it used with a 250GB hard drive. The previous owner downgraded the drive before he sold it (like what I'm trying to do).

The only external hard drive I have is a WD 750GB.

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Best way to swap hard drives?

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