New Laptop Hard Drive

Gbailey75

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Aug 20, 2012
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10,510
I ordered one of the new Seagate hybrids to update/upgrade my Latitude D630. I am running Windows 7, 64-bit on the laptop, and I am seeking advice as to whether I should consider a clean install of Windows on the new hard drive or not. This was an original Vista Laptop with a W7 upgrade and wonder if I will have better performance with a clean W7 install.

If the advice is to do a clean install, then is there a way to clone the C drive -- without including the operating system? Or seeking suggestions on how to transfer contents of C drive onto new drive. Thanks.
 

bliq00

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Feb 23, 2011
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18,660
take the old drive and put it into a USB enclosure. Do clean install on the new drive. then plug in external enclosure into USB and the old filesystem should be available to copy over files as needed.
 
Quess I'm slow, but will add anyways.
What I would do:
.. Remove Old HDD.
.. Do a clean Install of Windows 7.
..... You do NOT have to re-install vista. You can use your Upgrade W7 disk. Just Select Custom install and DO Not enter your key when propted to.
..... Will post steps to follow.
.. Once windows is installed on New HDD.
Connect HDD to either a SATA - > USB cable, or get a usb sata enclosure and put HDD into it.
.. Plug old HDD into USB port and transfer all of your Files/data.
... NOTE. You can even copy the favorites director contents from old HDD to new HDD.

Added: How to use the Upgrade disk to do a clean install:
A true geek has never been intimidated by the registry, but lets face it, it's a mess in there. To access the registry you will first need to open up the start menu and type "regedit" into the search field, followed by enter. To find the proverbial needle in this haystack, you will need to navigate through the tabs listed on the left in the following order:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/ . If you don't like doing it the hard way just click Edit then Find and type MediaBootInstall into the search field, and press enter.

Once found, double click MediaBootInstall and change the "1" to a "0". Once you have finished this, simply click Ok and close out the Registry Editor
PLUS
Before we try to activate our copy of Windows, we need to reset or "Re-Arm" the activation sequence. To do this, simply open up the start menu and type cmd but instead of just pressing enter, you need to press "Ctrl" + "Shift" + "Enter" to run it as an administrator. You can also accomplish this by clicking the start menu, typing cmd into the search box, then right clicking the command prompt application and selecting Run as administrator.

Once the command prompt appears type slmgr /rearm and press enter. Next simply type Exit and hit enter again, after which it will ask you to restart your machine.

Complimence of : http://www.maximumpc.com/article/howtos/how_use_your_windows_7_upgrade_disk_fresh_pc?page=0,1
 

popatim

Titan
Moderator
You can use the upgrade feature of Win7 to upgrade Vista and then clone that over to the new Seagate.
or
you can clone vista over to the new seagate and then use the win7 upgrade on that
but
A clean install is never a bad idea but be sure to have all your drivers downloaded and ready in case Win7 doesnt have them

If the new seagate came with the cloning kit, or you have access to an external drive dock/mount, you could just install the new drive and load Win7 on it and then attach the the old harddrive to the cloning kit and attach that to the usb port and transfer your data files over. The cloning kit setup this way will act just like an external drive.

Programs must be reinstalled. There is no way to transfer them from one OS to the next after win7 has been installed.
 

Gbailey75

Honorable
Aug 20, 2012
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10,510
Thanks for all of the help. I was able to install the new hard drive and complete a clean install of W7, 64-bit. I moved a number of folders over to the new hard drive but the computer recognizes none of them. At this point, it's like a brand new drive with only the initial user. Next steps??