Laptop Hard Drive Question

Magic_x_uk · 19 Sep 2006 at 08:12

Hay all,

Have a Laptop that is about 2 months old with XP home SP2 installed.

The Laptop never came with a recovery cd, as the HD is 40GB but in a partition of arguments sake 50/50 split.

With the I386 folder and recovery process built into the partition etc.

Now as the HD is only 40GB I may want to change it in the future to a larger one. Just wondered what was the best way of trasferring everything from one to another. I am savvy on normal PC's as in connecting HD's up, but have never even seen a Laptop HD so know idea on what connectors etc they use.

Just thinking of getting a bigger HD (I presume laptop HD's are the same accross the board ?)

Just unsure how to get everything off of the original and still be able to then use the laptop makers recovery process from the original HD on my new HD

hope this makes sense if not, let me know and I shall hit myself with a spanner and try again

wizardmaxx · 19 Sep 2006 at 08:31

Fortunately i read the notebook manual that came with the computer and you should have made a recovery disc immediately onto a blank dvd disc. If you had or have done that then you should be able to just install the bigger hard drive and use the recovery program (I think i press f10 during boot up). You may have to fdisk and format the new disk first. I would get a 2.5in external hdd usb2.0 case, as u will end up with a spare drive anyway. You would be able to prepare the new disk using your desktop and the external case and use your old disk as say a back up drive or to transport files, etc.

A laptop hard drive is pretty much the same as a normal desktop hdd, but has a different ide connector (hence the external case) and of course much smaller. You can get a notebook to desktop ide convertor, but i personally prefer the external case.

benjo plz. · 19 Sep 2006 at 08:34

wizardmaxx said:
You can get a notebook to desktop ide convertor, but i personally prefer the external case.

Unless seeing as it's two months old the laptop drive happens to be a sata one....

wizardmaxx · 19 Sep 2006 at 08:40

Phnom_Penh said:
Unless seeing as it's two months old the laptop drive happens to be a sata one....

Do you get sata notebook drives. Didn't know that. My notebook is just over two months old and its ide. Googled it and you are correct they are out, suppose it depends on the notebook model, and sata external cases should soon follow.

Phemo · 19 Sep 2006 at 09:17

If you have the i386 folder accessible, you could botch an XP CD together quite easily if you got the boot sector from an actual XP CD. Easiest thing to do would be to use nLite and then the make ISO option - it should result in a bootable ISO using your laptop manufacturer's customised Windows files.

I have done this before on a Toshiba laptop which only had the i386 folders on the hard drive. I did it a slightly different way - I got a legit XP CD, ripped an ISO of it then opened it in an MagicISO, an ISO editing tool. I then deleted the i386 folder in the ISO file and added the i386 folder on the laptop's hard drive. I then simply saved the ISO file, burnt it and then I was left with a Toshiba customised Windows needing no activation on Toshiba systems.

Or you could simply use the idea mentioned already - get a laptop HD to USB/IDE adapter and then take an image of the drive onto another drive then restore it to the new drive.