How to copy your laptop hard disk

Friday, February 16, 2007

Well, it may seem a slightly unusual post, but there's a good reason for it. Just before Christmas, my laptop starting hanging for no reason, and I had to reboot each time. There was no pattern to it, and sometimes the hang corrupted my data.

I decided to bite the bullet and buy a new hard drive, make a copy of my old drive and restore this to the new hard disk. The reason for this is that I had about 20Gb of data, including lots of utility programs and I had XP configured how I wanted it. I didn't want to have to reinstall the operating system and start again. Anyway how hard could it be?

So...much angst, sleeplessness etc. later I live to tell the tale, and thought I'd share the process in case anyone else needed the help! I am assuming a basic level of competence - knowing where programs are located etc., and also that your setup is similar to mine. There may be easier ways to do this process and if so, please contact me so I can simplify this process.

You will need:

A couple of hours and plenty of patience
A new 2.5" HDD
Your old laptop hard disk drive
Your laptop manual (for how to take out your old hard drive)
A PC with at least as much free space as the amount of data on your laptop disk
Your Windows XP disk
2.5" USB external caddy
Bart PE
Acronis True Image 10 Home - trial

Step 1 - preparation for the whole process (do this on your PC)

Download and install Acronis.
Download and install BartPE.
In the Acronis directory you will find a folder called 'BartPE' or similar. Rename this to Acronis. Copy it to the BartPE plugins folder.
Put your XP disk in the CD/DVD drive and run BartPE. In the box for source, put the drive letter of where your XP disk is.
Click 'plugins' and ensure that 'Acronis' is both present and enabled (highlight and click the enable/disable button).
Close this, put a blank CD in your CD/DVD writer and in the media output box click 'Burn to CD/DVD'. If you only have one CD/DVD drive, copy the i386 folder to the BartPE directory on your PC and change the 'source' accordingly. Click build.

Step 2 - Prepare the new disk

Remove the new HDD from it's protective wrapper. If you're not used to handling hardware, be very careful, only touch the edges and make sure you aren't full of static electricity.
Remove your old HDD from your laptop and put this in the protective wrapper.
(Make sure you know which drive is which - to make the process easier don't worry, you won't harm anything!).
Install the new hard drive in the laptop.
Boot the laptop using your XP CD and make the largest partition possible without installing XP (press 'C').
Exit and reboot the laptop using the BartPE disk.
When loaded, choose the A43 file manager and right-click the C-drive. Choose format (NOT quick format).
Switch the laptop off when done.

Step 3 - Make image of old hard drive

Put the old hard disk into the 2.5" USB caddy.
Attach it to your PC and ensure that you can see your data on the drive.
Run Acronis and make a copy of your entire old hard drive. Save it to a location on your PC and ensure you verify the backup. (For my 20Gb this process took less than 30 minutes).
Once this is done find the 'tib' file Acronis created and copy this to your old hard drive.
Double-click on the 'safely remove hardware' icon in the system tray and remove your USB caddy. (If you don't do this, you could corrupt your data - this applies to any USB device).

Step 4 - Restore image to new hard drive

With your old HDD still in the USB enclosure, plug it into your laptop. It's important to do this whilst the laptop isn't on.
Switch the laptop on and boot using BartPE.
Ensure you can view your old hard drive files.
When booted, go to system > storage > Acronis.
Choose restore and select the 'tib' file that you copied onto your old hard drive.
Select both the drive (in my case F:) and MBR and track 0.
Select the new drive to restore to, and again ensure that you have both the drive (should be C:) and MBR and track 0 selected.
Restore.
When done turn off your laptop, disconnect the USB hard drive and boot the laptop normally (take out the BartPE CD).

You should now have transferred your entire old hard drive contents to your new one. As a bonus, you now have an external hard disk drive for data backups and transfers!

Any other advice?

When buying a new hard drive, it only has to be as large as the amount of data you have on your old hard drive. My old one was 60Gb and my new one 40Gb - this was fine as I only had about 20Gb of data. Don't go for one that is slower (fewer RPM) than your existing drive. Buy it locally - it's much easier to take it back under warranty than if you've bought it over the Internet.

Try cleaning up your disk before transferring - uninstall unused programs, use a freeware program like CCleaner to remove unused files and do a general cleanup. Defragment your disk if it needs it.

My caddy/enclosure only seems to be recognised just after installation - I go to control panel > system properties > device manager > Universal Serial Bus Controllers and delete the entry for my caddy. Next time I boot my PC, it sees the caddy and installs it so I can see the files. Slightly irritating but not the end of the world.

Good luck!

Labels: internet, misc

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