Notebook HDDs and Data Cloning

R

Red Machine D

Gawd
Joined
Jan 16, 2005
Messages
945
I've decided, after consulting my bank account and the thread in this forum, to go ahead and grab a Seagate Momentus 7200.1 80GB (shown here), but before I even click the "Add to Cart" button, I'd like to know just how to get my data clones from the 60GB clunker currently in my Inspiron onto the new HDD.

What interfaces and programs are used to do this? What kind of equipment will I need? Links to the needed gear and programs? Advice?

Once again, advice to be rewarded with internets.
 
If you formatted the hard drive after you got the inspiron, and removed the backup partition, you just need to ghost it with normal options.

If the recovery partition is still intact... Yikes. (and just remembered my e1705 is in the shop, and therefore all my research regarding this is on it)
 
Howdy.

Easy solution (pending you have Norton Ghost and this adapter..)

To answer your question, you will need a 2.5' to 3.5' adapter
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=7433&vpn=HD2.5/3.5&manufacture=Others

This will allow you to adapt the laptop hard drive into a desktop computer.
If you have the hard drive space on a free hard drive its easy to Ghost your laptop hard drive to a desktop hard drive, then unplug the laptop and plug in the new hard drive and ghost your data back from the main pc to your laptop drive.

If you don't have a hard drive big enough, you will need two adapters to make it work (or you could ghost it to cd-dvd media if you really wanted to..)

Hope this helps.
 
Are there any other programs that will clone the data besides Norton Ghost? I've had nothing but massive (read: complete drive wipe) problems with Norton products in the past and their complete and utter memory-devouring side effects.
 
Ghost was actually written by another group and then Norton purchased it. Ghost 10 is what I remember using, and it was simple, straightforward and I booted it off its CDROM.
I think Ghost 2003 is also not terribly offensive to the senses.
 
Hope you plan to keep a running backup of that Seagate, the Momentus line is known for severe head crashes. We're talking unrecoverable here. Quick when they're still working, though.
 
davidlem said:
Hope you plan to keep a running backup of that Seagate, the Momentus line is known for severe head crashes. We're talking unrecoverable here. Quick when they're still working, though.
Click to expand...
Spontaneous ones? What kind of circumstances? I hadn't heard of this, and I've got one in production.
 
there's an amazing tool that I still use to this date. it's ranish's partition manager

http://www.ranish.com/part/
it's honestly one of the best programs I've ever used

You can use that to very easily copy over your dell partition if you want to. hell, you could copy your normal partition too. then use a program like partition magic (i've had worse experiences with this program than ghost but so it goes) to expand your partition to span the rest of the drive.
 
unhappy_mage said:
Spontaneous ones? What kind of circumstances? I hadn't heard of this, and I've got one in production.
Click to expand...

I've *heard* they're sometimes heat related. But this doesn't account for the majority and I cannot confirm first-hand. What I do know is that a majority of Momentus drives I see are unrecoverable due to significant and clearly visible grooves cut in the media surface.
 
Red Machine D said:
edit: Never mind, I found out the old-fashioned way.
Click to expand...

I love when people do this. What was the problem and what was the solution?
 
Problem: Didn't know what type of hard drive I had in my lappy.

Solution: Pulled the damn thing out and looked on the label.

Verdict: Serial ATA 150.
 
Oh shit! It just occurred to me: My primary desktop does NOT have a Serial ATA interface! My laptop, on the other hand, only takes Serial ATA HDDs! How in the hell am I going to clone my data? Is there a USB adapter or something I can jam into the mobo or something to make it accept 2.5" Serial ATA HDDs?
 
check this out http://www.meritline.com/2-5-aluminum-usb2-external-sata-drive-enclosure.html
does your laptop detect usb storage on bootup? i'm guessing it should since it's new enough to have sata. in that case, you might be able to just hook it up to your laptop and do a mirror with ranish or hell, maybe even just put the new hdd in the enclosure and use ghost (not sure if it can) or pmagic (again not sure but one of these two should be able to) to mirror the stuff over to the new drive and you're home free
 
Explain this "mirror with ranish or hell" to me. I am obviously a lot more retarded than I initially thought.
 
Red Machine D said:
Explain this "mirror with ranish or hell" to me. I am obviously a lot more retarded than I initially thought.
Click to expand...
Have you checked out the ranish website linked earlier in the topic? Very powerful tool. The only problem it has is that it can't enlarge partitions so you'll need to use a program like pmagic afterwards to do it.

But now that I think of it, if you wanted to kill two birds with one stone, you could just go the pmagic route from the start. If you get your new hard drive, boot into windows, put the drive in the sata enclosure and plug in usb, you can use pmagic (partition magic) to copy over any partitions to the new drive and change the size. Then, shut down, take the new drive, put it in the laptop, and you're good to go.

Seems like a real hell of a time to do this kind of stuff though. I'd personally just do a reinstall. Forget about that stupid dell crap anyway. :)
 
Red Machine D said:
Oh shit! It just occurred to me: My primary desktop does NOT have a Serial ATA interface! My laptop, on the other hand, only takes Serial ATA HDDs! How in the hell am I going to clone my data? Is there a USB adapter or something I can jam into the mobo or something to make it accept 2.5" Serial ATA HDDs?
Click to expand...

All SATA drives utilize the same connectors, whether 3.5" desktop or 2.5" laptop.

Now, if you're using a DOS-based cloning utility you'll need to spend the bones on a quality Adaptec PCI SATA interface card ($40-60). Otherwise you can go cheap on a Promise PCI SATA card ($20-40).
 
You could use Ghost in a BartPE environment and not have to worry about drivers.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top