I Want To Upgrade My HD.....But I Don't know If I Can..

[BBL]

This is on my Compaq Presario F730US. It currently has an (original) 120GB HD installed, which (although it is 10x bigger than the one on my previous laptop) is still a bit small, compared to todays standards. What, with all the 500GB, 1TB, 1.5TB, and 2+TB models out there.


Does anyone know if I but a 320 (or 500) GB 5400RPM SATA HD, likely a Seagate or Western Digital, if it will work with the computer?

What I want to do, is upgrade the HD, copy my entire current HD over to the new one, upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium, and perhaps put a dual-boot mode with LinuxMint 9, or similar on it.

I now understand that this isn't the fastest, best laptop out there, but it isn't a Chevy Chevette either.


Has anyone upgraded (or know of someone who has) their HD on the F700 series of Presario laptops that has had it work correctly?

I don't know how to transfer all the data, but, I read somewhere that Vista has a tool for this? If so, is it a matter of getting a SATA to USB adapter, copying everything, then swapping the HD's?


Any input anyone can give me would be helpful. I really like this laptop, but 120GB isn't too much to work with nowadays.

 

[FishAk]

Yes you can, and I would suggest the Momentus XT hybrid, which you can get in a 500GB flavor for about $130. The important thing for you is 2.5 inch form factor.

Another member on this forum turned me on to a very good file synchronization/backup tool, and I'll pass it on: Goodsync As far as I can tell, the trial version is free. I've only had it for a week, and it has a timer, but no indication of the time running out. It's an awesome tool for backing up data.

You can buy an enclosure for a 2.5 inch drive, and put the old drive from your laptop in it. Than, in your case, simply pop your new drive into your laptop, install Windows, connect to your old drive in the enclosure with USB, and copy the files across. You will find it handy to use Goodsync to keep your important files backed up to your new external drive.

As an aside, you may want to consider a couple sticks of 1Gb RAM for that machine, if it still has just the stock 2 sticks of 512Mb. Even better would be 2 x 2GB sticks, but I'm not sure your motherboard would support 4GB, and I don't know how to tell except to try.

 

[corkyg]

It is very easy to upgrade a laptop HDD provided you have an external drive and good cloning software, such as Acronis TI 2010. (Do it with bootable media.)

But!! Your Presario laptop must be SATA! No room for an adapter of any kind. If not SATA, you'll have to upgrade to a larger PATA/IDE. Period.

For that or SATA, the following routine is the same.

If you decide on a 320 or 500 GB hybrid, then you will need an external case for it. (Those only come in SATA)

1. Install the new drive in the external case.
2. Boot with TI Rescue Media.
3. Manually clone your existing drive proportionally to the new HDD.
4. When done, shut down.
5. Remove old HDD and remove it from the Presario HDD caddy.
6. Remove the newly cloned drive from the external case and put it in the Presario caddy.
7. Put the new caddied HDD in the Presario and you will boot to exactly what you had before, but with much more space.

Again - you can only do this if your Presario has a SATA drive. If not, you have to find a larger IDE. Newegg has a 320 GB Scorpio Blue in ATA-6 (PATA/IDE.)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136345

 

[BBL]

Yes you can, and I would suggest the Momentus XT hybrid, which you can get in a 500GB flavor for about $130. The important thing for you is 2.5 inch form factor.

Another member on this forum turned me on to a very good file synchronization/backup tool, and I'll pass it on: Goodsync As far as I can tell, the trial version is free. I've only had it for a week, and it has a timer, but no indication of the time running out. It's an awesome tool for backing up data.

You can buy an enclosure for a 2.5 inch drive, and put the old drive from your laptop in it. Than, in your case, simply pop your new drive into your laptop, install Windows, connect to your old drive in the enclosure with USB, and copy the files across. You will find it handy to use Goodsync to keep your important files backed up to your new external drive.

As an aside, you may want to consider a couple sticks of 1Gb RAM for that machine, if it still has just the stock 2 sticks of 512Mb. Even better would be 2 x 2GB sticks, but I'm not sure your motherboard would support 4GB, and I don't know how to tell except to try.

The RAM will be upgraded. Unfortunately, 2GB is the limit, as that is all the motherboard will support. I appreciate your recommendation on the HD, but that is a very new product, and I'd like to see how it holds up. It's also quite expensive, compared to similar 500GB hard drives.

My thing is, I really don't know how to transfer everything. It seems like a pretty cumbersome task, and I don't even know how the software knows where to drop it on the C: drive, or if I have to do all of that myself. If I was to wipe my HD today, and re-install Windows, I would need to re-install GTA: San Andreas, GIMP X.X, Firefox, MS Office, and that's about it, to be honest. There is, of course, my music library, and photos, but those are all on my desktop. All I need to do is use my flash drive again, and transfer them all. The issue I have, is that I no longer have a Vista install disc. So, if I was to simply install a new HD, I would have to pay nearly $150 for the disc, just to install an OS. That ticks me off. For $40 more, I might as well buy a full Windows 7 disc, but I don't want to spend that much money.

It is very easy to upgrade a laptop HDD provided you have an external drive and good cloning software, such as Acronis TI 2010. (Do it with bootable media.)

Unfortunately, I have neither.

But!! Your Presario laptop must be SATA! No room for an adapter of any kind. If not SATA, you'll have to upgrade to a larger PATA/IDE. Period.

No problem, I still have plenty of options, it seems.

For that or SATA, the following routine is the same.

If you decide on a 320 or 500 GB hybrid, then you will need an external case for it. (Those only come in SATA)

Wait, what? If I get anything bigger than a 250, it won't fit in my computer?

1. Install the new drive in the external case.
2. Boot with TI Rescue Media.
3. Manually clone your existing drive proportionally to the new HDD.
4. When done, shut down.
5. Remove old HDD and remove it from the Presario HDD caddy.
6. Remove the newly cloned drive from the external case and put it in the Presario caddy.
7. Put the new caddied HDD in the Presario and you will boot to exactly what you had before, but with much more space.
So, the software does all the work? It knows where to put/copy everything? I thought if I copied the OS, I would run into Validation problems, especially if I want to upgrade to 7.

Again - you can only do this if your Presario has a SATA drive. If not, you have to find a larger IDE. Newegg has a 320 GB Scorpio Blue in ATA-6 (PATA/IDE.)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136345

Yes, the Presario has a SATA, thankfully. So, a 500GB SATA will fit in the original 120GB HD caddy, and slide right in, correct?

Is there a brand that is known to be more reliable? I thought Western Digital and Seagates were, but I've been reading a lot of them crashing lately.

Does 5400 vs. 7200 matter? I don't want any excessive heat damaging anything. How "noticeable" is the difference between the two?

 

[FishAk]

Corkyg, thank you for turning me on to Goodsynk. So far, I think it's a great program. I don't own many programs, since I can usually find a free one that works as good or better than one you have to buy. So far, Goodsync is treating me good enough I may upgrade to the “pro” version.


BBL, from your first post, I gathered you intended to upgrade to W7, so I didn't recommend an imaging tool. If you upgrade, W7 will create a partition and install itself correctly, than you can transfer your data from the old drive. However, if you want to just transfer everything from your old disk to the new one, that can be easily done with an image.


I don't use Acronis. For one thing, their license is for a single computer, and you aren't authorized to use it on any other computer unless the original suffers “catastrophic failure”. Than you are allowed to transfer the license to another single machine. You can't use the CD the program makes to create or backup files, so the trial version must be loaded in order to save anything.


I like Macrium Reflect. It's free, and has worked many times for me. The only time it didn't work is when I allowed the image file to be defragmented. Image files are relatively fragile, and they don't like to be moved, or disturbed. For this reason, in order to keep an image file valid, it should be created to and stored in a partition, separate from the rest of the system.


You boot to the image program from a CD the program has you make. So, if you follow corkyg's instructions, the new drive will be an exact clone of the old drive. Your computer won't hardly know the difference, except for all the extra room. Don't wipe your old drive till after the new one is up and running. If you make a mistake somehow, simply re-install the old drive, and it will work the same as it has been.


Once you have everything up and running, download “Partition Wizard Home Edition” (free), create a new partition, and transfer all your personal files out of your “C” partition to the new one. You can still link to the files from the W7 library, so they are as accessible as if they were still in your C drive. This way, you can image your C partition, and save a few snapshots of your operating system and programs without having image files that are too big to store. This will make it very easy in the future to restore your OS/programs to an earlier known good state, should anything bad happen to your C drive. The image will have all your programs and settings from the instant you took the snapshot.

 

[BBL]

This still all sounds a bit difficult for me. I've never copied HD's before (obviously) so I wonder if it would be easier for me to skip that transfer stage altogether?

Basically, if I went and bought a new HD (I would have to buy a full version of 7, correct?) and did not transfer anything, and simply installed 7 on it, I'd be in basically the same boat I'm in now, program-wise.

The only programs I've added to the computer, are GTA: SA, GIMP, MS Office 2003, Firefox......and I think that's it, aside from a clone of my music and photo library from my desktop, which can easily be reloaded.


Since that is all I have on my HD, would it just be easier for me to buy a new version of 7 with the HD, and simply install it? Or no?

I wouldn't mind copying my current HD to a new one, if it is a worthwhile effort, and can be done fairly easily.

From what I understand, its:

Pop CD into the drive, boot the computer to the desktop, install software.

Connect new HD to the computer via the USB cable, tell the software to clone it to Drive E:, I suppose it would be. Let it do it's thing, power down the computer, remove battery, and swap HD's. Then reboot.

Correct?

 

[FishAk]

If you boot your system from a CD, you will not get to your normal desktop. You will get to whatever program is on the CD.

Have you ever entered a computers BIOS program? It's what loads before your Operating system- such as Windows. From BIOS, you can tell your computer which drive to boot from, and in which order. You should know how to do this.

Before you rode a bicycle, you had never driven one before. Now you can ride one without thinking much about it. A new program in a computer is much the same. If you never try, you will never be able to use it.

Download Macrium Reflect- the free version- and read the help file. Make A CD with the program, and boot your computer with it. Play with it, and see how it works. You don't have to do everything all at once. Take small steps- just don't do anything that you can't reverse. Don't delete your current OS partition till you have one working on your new disk. That way, it's simple to revert back to your old drive.

Starting from scratch is also easy with W7. You don't need a clone program to do that. You need to learn a few of the basic things about your computer, but like riding a bike, they're best learned hands on. The only place you can really screw yourself, is by deleting your personal data files. Everything else can be fixed, so save all your personal data to a safe place before you start to play.

 

[BBL]

Sorry, perhaps I misspoke. I meant, boot the computer, then when the desktop loads, put in the CD, then load the program. Then connect the other HD, tell the program to copy the files to Drive #: or whatever it will show up as, and when it's done, simply shut down, remove the battery, swap the drives out, and reboot, correct?


I've been in the BIOS on my old Dell laptop, but I cannot access the BIOS in the Compaq. It asks me for a password, and I have no idea what it is.

 

[corkyg]

I find it easier to boot from a CD or flash drive, then clone the old HD to the new one.

When done, power down, swap drives, and boot to the new drive. Here's the setup I use to do it:

FishAK: OK - as far as Acronis TI goes, I have it installed on this machine. But, I only clone drives, period. So, the Rescue Media does that for me on the laptop, etc. The real key is, it is only used on one machine at a time - that's a decades old fair use rule.

 

[FishAk]

If you put a bootable CD in your optical drive, and reboot, does your computer boot to the program on the CD, or does it still boot to Windows?

If the BIOS isn't set up to boot from the CD drive when a bootable CD is present, and you don't have a password to change the BIOS, you won't be able to load W7 from it's install disk.

To use corkyg's method: (I'm assuming you have very limited room on your current drive, so you will need to do a little shuffling.)

Download and install: Macrium Reflect

Download and install: Partition Wizard Home Edition


Download and install Ausilogics Disk Defrag (these programs are all free)

Install your new drive in an enclosure, and connect it to your computer with USB

Using Partition Wizard, create a partition on the very inside edge of your new drive, which is the far right of the graphic interface. This partition should be about 40 or 50GB, and label it: Image Drive, or some such. This is where you will store your images.

Make another partition that spans a good portion of the rest of your new drive- but leave at least 40GB on the front of the drive for your OS/ programs. Label this partition: Documents or something.

Copy all your important documents, movies, downloads, photos, whatever to your new Documents partition. Copy- don't move. You want to be sure everything is present on your new drive before you start cutting stuff from the old drive.

When you are sure all your personal files are safely on your new drive, delete them from your C drive on your old disk. Obviously, it would be safer to copy a set of your files to a third drive, but having all your important files on your new drive won't be any worse than only having them on your old drive.

When you have removed all your personal files from your C drive (read: Partition), it should be less than 30GB- probably much less. Defragment your C drive using Ausilogics Disk Defrag, than, using Partition Wizard, shrink your C partition to about 60GB or so.

At this point, your OS/programs should be on your old boot disk, and all your data should be on your new disk. You can still access your data, but it will be slow because of the USB interface, but other than that, your computer should act normal.

Inside the Image partition on your new drive, create a folder called Images. In that folder, create a folder called Images for Laptop, and finally make a folder inside that last one called: laptop image 1. Your image partition should hold at least 3 images, and you should put each in it's own folder to keep them straight. Macrium gives the image files a number for the name, so just use the folder names to ID the image files.


Make a partition on your old drive for your data, and one for images, just like you did for the new drive. Copy your most important data back to the old drive in this new data partition. If your drive is full now, you won't get everything to fit back to this new partition on your old drive, so just take the most important stuff you can't afford to loose.


Tell your Defrag tool to exclude your image folders. Images don't like to be bothered. You can read them as many times as you like, but don't move them, or re size the partition they are in.


Use Macrium to create an image of just your C drive to each of your new Image partitions (one on each drive) with the default settings.


This next part I'm not sure about. You may need to create a partition on the front of your new drive to restore your OS image to. However, it's possible that Macrium will recognize the unallocated space, and make the partition for you. In either case, the partition should be at least as big as the original partition, but it can be bigger, and it needs to be “active”. I have always just used Partition Wizard to make an Active partition for the OS to go on.

To restore image: click Restore> Browse to the image, and select it>Select the partition you want to restore (there will just be the one)>Chose the partition to overwrite (this will be your new drive, and there is an option to select unallocated space)>New partition type = Active> It doesn't matter about the drive letter> No, not necessary to check file system on re-boot> No, it's not necessary to verify image before restoring (if it doesn't work, no amount of verifying will make it work)> Replace with the Master Boot Record> Finnish.


Once the program completes, turn off the computer, remove the battery, disconnect the enclosure from power, and put your new drive into the computer. It should boot normally with your current OS, programs, and all settings intact.. If not, put your old drive back, and it will boot normally. Than you can start troubleshooting, or try different images.


Hmmm... this is much longer than I meant it to be.