Shoutbox

Hey guys, need some advice again!

Well Dell's sending me a new hard drive for my Studio 15 laptop. Of course, I'll need to backup all my stuff and then transfer it all.

However, to avoid this, I'm thinking of just copying the entire partition over to the new hard drive and then everything as usual from that one.

I'm just wondering if this will work with the use of programs such as GParted or Cobian Backup will work for this, or if you have any other free suggestions.

And also, would I need to 'prepare' anything extra (OS-wise?)? I haven't unplugged the HD yet (I know, I'm such a win cause I lost all my small screwdrivers.) but I do have desktop sized power/SATA cables.

~Thanks!

If using Windows 7, look into their "Backup and Restore" panel.

Use Windows 7's built in System Image tool and create a backup of your Windows 7 install to an external hard disk. Install your new hard drive, boot from your Windows 7 DVD and choose to restore a system image and point to the location where the System Image is backed up.

Edit: Since you don't have an external hard drive:



And when restoring, just use that network location again.

Using a wired connection would make it a lot faster, however if you're patient and trust a wireless connection for a complete backup, go ahead . ETHERNET THAT BITCH!

Gparted only modiffies paretitions, and I'm not familiar with cobain. Moving your OS to a new hdd isn't usually complicated. I've done this before and used norton ghost loaded onto a bartpe disk. The only catch is that you will need to make an image of the disk first, on a 3rd drive. An external usb hard drive will work fine. Depending on the size of your disk to move and the amount of data on it, you might have to wait a few hours to allow the image to be made.

Also remember that if using Win 7's backup that you can only backup to a Network Location with Win 7 Pro or higher......Home Edition doesn't offer that

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Originally posted by djdannyp
Also remember that if using Win 7's backup that you can only backup to a Network Location with Win 7 Pro or higher......Home Edition doesn't offer that

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Lmao whoops he forgot to ask if I had Ultimate/Pro.

I guess I'll just unplug the other HD and do it

Thanks~ =)

quote:

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Originally posted by Nagamasa
Well Dell's sending me a new hard drive for my Studio 15 laptop. Of course, I'll need to backup all my stuff and then transfer it all.  However, to avoid this, I'm thinking of just copying the entire partition over to the new hard drive and then everything as usual from that one.

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That is tempting, but let's talk about why they are sending you a new hard drive.  I assume it is a warranty replacement because the old drive has developed bad areas and you have experienced some problems with it?

If so and the problems are persistent, you may be better off just putting in the effort of backing up the data and reinstalling the apps.  OS and application files that are already damaged will be still corrupt after you transfer them to another drive.  Sometimes it works out ok, but but be prepared it might not.

quote:

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Originally posted by MeEtc
Gparted only modiffies paretitions

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I thought so too for a long time because it isn't intuitive, but no -- GParted can be used to transfer partitions to another drive.  The Move function (which most would try first) doesn't do this, but Copy does (and then you can optionally delete the source).  I also don't remember whether I had to create the destination partition manually before the copy would work.

quote:

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Originally posted by Adeptus

quote:

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Originally posted by Nagamasa
Well Dell's sending me a new hard drive for my Studio 15 laptop. Of course, I'll need to backup all my stuff and then transfer it all.  However, to avoid this, I'm thinking of just copying the entire partition over to the new hard drive and then everything as usual from that one.

---

That is tempting, but let's talk about why they are sending you a new hard drive.  I assume it is a warranty replacement because the old drive has developed bad areas and you have experienced some problems with it?

If so and the problems are persistent, you may be better off just putting in the effort of backing up the data and reinstalling the apps.  OS and application files that are already damaged will be still corrupt after you transfer them to another drive.  Sometimes it works out ok, but but be prepared it might not.

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Yeah warranty replacement - laptop randomly gets stuck. It's still new - 4 months old.

I get 10 days to switch hard drives and send it back, which is why I need it nice and speedy to get my computer "business as usual" again. Of course, if it doesn't work out, I'll revert to the 'tried and tested' manually doing it method.

But thanks for letting me know~

Don't forget programs like http://ninite.com that saves you a bunch of time for generic stuff

I've been trying various harddisk cloning tools when my drive went bad. The problem is, various tools just don't handle bad sectors well. In my case it was a SSD with a couple of bad sectors on it. CloneZilla for example (based on DD) just errors and stops when it encounters a bad sector. Perhaps it does have a commandline switch to ignore those, but it's not in CloneZilla's GUI.

Eventually had success with EASEUS Disk Copy.

Before you start copying though, run checkdisk fully to fix things as far as it is recoverable. In Xxplorer rightclick on the drive -> Properties -> Tools -> Error-checking -> Check now. Make sure to check all the options. When it is the system drive it will probably only start checking once you reboot. Then right after chechdisk start copying it before it crashes and data corrupts again. After you restored the disk to the new drive, run checkdisk again to restore what couldn't be fixed when it was on the broken drive.

Like Adeptus said, it's no guarantee it will work, and you may still be left with a lot of corrupted data and crashes because of it, but it's worth a try. Worked for me, still running stable on the restored data.


Dot you have a way to get the data across, since it is a laptop? USB connected harddisk would be the easiest way if available. On the other hand, you can just connect the SATA laptop drives to your regular PC these days... used to be more trouble when they used different cables back in the day.