| Author | Message | ||
     Ochoa0042 |
i have a Q.. my hard drive is crashing, i can turn the computer on after a few tries but dont want to because i dont want the hard drive to get any worse, it has turned on to a black & white screen saying 'internal HDD error' so yea the hdd is going out but still has some hope.. nonetheless, we are planning to get a new HDD. a new HDD is totally blank with no operating system on it. my question is that can we transfere the entire dying HDD onto the other new one including the operating system? ~~thanks | ||
| Froggy |
If the drive is still working, yes, you can clone it using Norton Ghost or a similar program. Problem is, if your drive is as flaky as that sounds, it may not work long enough for it to do its thing. | ||
| Ochoa0042 |
good to hear! norton ghost huh, I was going to take it to a computer shop for the operation, hopefully its not too much for their service | ||
| Damnut |
I think I have a copy of Ghost somewhere if you need it. | ||
| Froggy |
It is really easy to do, hardest part will be getting both drives hooked up and running, then fighting the dying drive to salvage what you can off it. Personally, I would use the new drive and install windows from scratch, then attempt to copy the documents/porn/music off the old drive. | ||
| Xb12xmike |
If you get the new drive it should come with software to clone your original drive. Install new drive as master, original as slave or sec master, boot to bios settings and set to boot to cd/dvd drive, reboot, (with software disc insterted) computer should start the cd software,.. follow instructions to duplicate the original drive on to the new drive. Reboot. Don't forget to reset the boot order back to the new master drive. It should work. I believe seagate/maxtor and WD use the same rebaged recovery software. I make an image of very fresh install and once all my software is installed. And keep the images on external drive. It is 10x faster to restore an image than a reinstall of OS. | ||
| Ochoa0042 |
all my stuff is on a storage device lol froggy /clipart{facepalm}, its a laptop computer and im not sure if the master/slave can work. I have never bought a OS before as because it comes prepackaged with newly bought computers and whatknot. And not going to start now to be honest, yikes +$200 for a OS!!!  The last time i've built a computer it had that fastest processor around (320MHz) and a mega 7.8GB harddrive, after that its been pretty much Dell comps FTW | ||
| Froggy |
Ok being a laptop drive, if it uses a SATA connection you can put it in any SATA compatible desktop as it uses the same connections. If it is IDE, you would need to purchase an adapter to convert from laptop IDE to desktop IDE. You would then use the desktop to do the clone. You can buy an OS cheap, legit Win7 Pro for $30 if you look around online. Your laptop should of came with some kind of restore disk, you can use that to reinstall whatever OS it came with. | ||
| Nik |
If its a laptop drive just get a USB enclosure for it. You could get one for each drive and do the image transfer on a seperate computer, or boot from a CD. | ||
| Rwven |
Acronis True Image It will make a bootable clone of you HDD. As long as the existing HDD bootgs cleanly it will do the job for you. I can vouch for it having used it myself. http://download.cnet.com/Acronis-True-Image-Home/3 000-2242_4-10168093.html |
