imaging from one laptop to another

blastman · 26 Jun 2012 at 17:37

hey all,

I have a mate who has a laptop that he is replacing.

He's just asked me weather there is a way to clone the hdd in the old one and restore it on the new. Mainly because as he has many programs and other bits installed that where hassle to do the first time.

I only really use WDS to image which removes the drivers and makes an image workable on any hardware.

Since this isn't an option at home, what the best way to go about this?

I should say that the 2 laptops have different specs, i5 to latest i7 (so sandy to ivy bridge).

thanks in advance

Sin_Chase · 26 Jun 2012 at 17:57

You can try doing it as long as it is Windows 7 to Windows 7.

Without specific software for bare metal recovery/different hardware there is no guarantees however.

lurkio · 26 Jun 2012 at 18:21

use sysprep with generlize ticked and shutdown as the option
this will reset the hardware drivers in windows
then image this and stick it on new laptop

Sin_Chase · 26 Jun 2012 at 18:44

lurkio said:
use sysprep with generlize ticked and shutdown as the option
this will reset the hardware drivers in windows
then image this and stick it on new laptop

Cool, did not realise sysprep had come on so far! Will definitely need to check that one out next time I am doing a hardware migration. :cool:

Is here any risk of User profiles being removed with a sysprep though?

robbalmbra · 26 Jun 2012 at 19:29

Rsync can be useful to transfer from A to B. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rsync

Raumarik · 26 Jun 2012 at 19:51

Sin_Chase said:
Cool, did not realise sysprep had come on so far! Will definitely need to check that one out next time I am doing a hardware migration.

Is here any risk of User profiles being removed with a sysprep though?

As far as I'm aware Sysprep doesn't touch user profiles at all, or at least it never has when I've used it.

Direct imaging will most likely work, i recently upgraded from a Q9450 to an Ivybridge i5 and didn't have to reinstall windows, just removed old drivers and put the new ones on. Windows 7 (and 8) are pretty good at this.

theheyes · 26 Jun 2012 at 20:22

I wouldn't bother with sysprep, just do a straight clone and it will initialize all the "new" hardware when you boot it on the new machine. You should always do a backup before using sysprep anyhow.

blastman · 26 Jun 2012 at 23:05

Cheers for the comments guys.

I think I'll suggest him to back up everything then try a straight clone, see what happens.

Although, keeping the recovery partition is a must. Should he want to sell or start over.

Might have to clone the new hdd as a back up...

bledd · 27 Jun 2012 at 10:50

Just format the new laptop with a clean sp1 disc and start over. Can't take that long to install fresh programs..