How to install new hard drive for laptop

randomguy

I like tinkering with things, but my knowledge of computers is limited. I have got it into my head to replace the hard drive on my laptop. In the past I have managed to install RAM, and mess about a bit with software, but that's as far as my computer knowledge goes.

So I have:

a limited knowledge of computers
a thinkpad T42 2378 with 30GB Hard Drive (but it says only 24GB most of the time. Is there 6GB of hidden IBM software?)
windows xp (no installation disks)
a Freecom external harddrive (160 GB)
a 250GB IDE ATA still in wrapper
an enclosure for 2.5 IDE with USB

An asus eeepc running linux (so I can connect to internet and try to find an answer when this all goes pear-shaped)

I am thinking:

Buy Norton Ghost or Acronis (or google for freeware)
Put Harddrive into enclosure and attach to laptop via USB - Do not partition or format
Clone via Ghost/Acronis
Take laptop apart, remove old harddrive, take new harddrive from enclosure and install in laptop.
Close up laptop and turn it on and find it works.

My main worries:

1. When I attach the new harddrive via enclosure, should i format it?
2. Will the new harddrive automatically boot with all the OS and software running after i have installed it in place of the old one?
3. I tried backing up my laptop to the external harddrive, but don't have floppy so not sure if what I have backed up is recoverable. Should/Can I back-up to external hard-drive properly without floppy before I start on this?

Am I deluding myself that I can do this? I know I could just pay a professional, and it is not stinginess that makes me want to do it myself (by the time you add it up it's probably the same cost overall). I want to learn more about how these things work, and think that doing it myself is the best way.

AlmightyCushion

Can't really go into too much detail as I have to head soon. First things first. Is the new ide drive you want to put in a 2.5" drive or a 3.5" drive. For most laptops it would need to be a 2.5" drive.

Acronis true image is meant to be pretty good. I haven't used it much but when I did I found it quite easy to get to grips with.

If you're willing to learn and have the time then I say do it yourself.

randomguy

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Can't really go into too much detail as I have to head soon. First things first. Is the new ide drive you want to put in a 2.5" drive or a 3.5" drive. For most laptops it would need to be a 2.5" drive.

2.5"

I have to say, I am tempted to just go for it...

Run_to_da_hills

If you intend a fresh install just swap the 2 1/2" hdd, it is usually secured in a removable bay by two or four small screws. On some of the older dells there is an adapter that plugs into the IDE pins. Make sure you have this the right way or you will bend one of the pins :eek:

If you are installing a new drive and intend transferring the contents of your laptop, try to find a good ghosting software, ie Maxblast, Norton Ghost or similar and place your new hdd in an external USB caddy (e10 for IDE or e15 for SATA from Maxburns on the quays http://maxburns.ie/start/enclosures.html)

Ghost everything from your laptop to the USB caddy and then remove it and place it into your laptop.

Overheal

your hard drive is simple to remove and will be under one of the panels beneath the laptop. Its a fairly simple thing to swap it out.

30GB is not referring to its formatted/active capacity and its a deception used by all manufacturers (I find it deceptive anyway :rolleyes:) so 24 is probably normal. eg. in a 200gb drive you might get 185gb or something near to it.

regarding no installation disk, do you have the XP product key? unfortunately its probably on a sticvker on the bottom of your laptop, and unfortunately its probably faded and unreadable at this stage... but with that it would be very simple to just find an install disc using your key.

gamer

Be careful not to lose the 4 screws that hold on the old drive ,they are tiny ,format in ntfs .dont delete old drive ,until everything is working fine ,tested on the new hd, you can use drivermax ,free prog to save all the laptop drivers to a folder , MY drivers.USE google 2find it .

kleefarr

I used Seagate disk wizard a while ago. Have to say it was bloody brilliant.
As far as I remember it is basically Acronis software. Connected up a new HDD to the computer via an IDE to USB cable and ran the clone disk utility.
Replaced old drive with new drive. Perfect. Even resizes any partitions accordingly.

Lazarus2.0

Overheal wrote: »

30GB is not referring to its formatted/active capacity and its a deception used by all manufacturers (I find it deceptive anyway :rolleyes:) so 24 is probably normal. eg. in a 200gb drive you might get 185gb or something near to it.

regarding no installation disk, do you have the XP product key? unfortunately its probably on a sticvker on the bottom of your laptop, and unfortunately its probably faded and unreadable at this stage... but with that it would be very simple to just find an install disc using your key.

There is usually a hidden recovery partition on Thinkpads which would account for some of the 'missing' HD space but not much . The rest is accounted for by what Overheal describes ( accurately , IMO ) as deception .

There are utilities available that will identify your product key if the sticker is not present or is unreadable .

Overheal

There are utilities available that will identify your product key if the sticker is not present or is unreadable .

actually if someone can post about that I need that to help my cousin reformat his machine.

Lazarus2.0

One of the most popular ...

http://www.magicaljellybean.com/

Creamy Goodness

the HD manufacturers are not decieving you it's simply telling you the truth.

a gigabyte is 1000megabytes.

windows reports a gigabyte as 1024 megabytes which is wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_prefix

someone mentioned to format in ntfs, that's assuming he's going to put a windows based OS > 2k on the machine. he may not want that or have a windows based os.

randomguy

So I went ahead and tried it. Cloned hard drive, using enclosure and Acornis. Computer still working fine.

Didn't do anything else, just went ahead and put in the new drive.

When I restart, the IBM screen shows for a few seconds, and then there is just a blank screen, cursor blinking in top left hand corner of screen.

So I turned it off, put in the old HD again, and something similar happened, but this time it went a bit further and said that there was no OS installed.

So I am on the eee, and seem to have broken my computer. Any ideas for how to get either the old or the new HD to boot?

Lazarus2.0

Cremo wrote: »

the HD manufacturers are not decieving you it's simply telling you the truth.

a gigabyte is 1000megabytes.

windows reports a gigabyte as 1024 megabytes which is wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI_prefix

Yeah , but when you purchase an item that is designed primarily for use in a PC and the only way the consumer has of verifying the capacity is via a PC , should the manufacturer not let the consumer know that the capacity will effectively be significantly lower than what it says on the tin ? It's a given that the PC will read the capacity in the only way it knows how and that is the only measure of capacity relevant to the consumer . When I check how much free space is on a HD and see 8Gb remaining I dont think 'Ah , grand . I've got 9 Gb really' . I know that regardless of the physical capacity the only numbers that matter are the numbers the PC reports . Technically correct but deceptive to the average consumer (billions of them) . If computers counted differently and reported greater capacity than the physical capacity as manufactured I'm sure my 160Gig drive would have a sticker on it saying 175Gig .

randomguy

I have managed to clone the hard drive no problem.

For most of the time I could then not boot with either the old or the new. I have also been trying to boot with either of them through the USB enclosure and that isn't working.

But then the original sometimes works again (I am on it now). So I plugged in the new HD through the USB and I can see it there and it reads like my external hard drive - so it is working, although one of the times I was being told that it was not formatted. (I didn't reformat it, just removed it and reattached it and it was fine).

So the central problem seems to be that it has been cloned, but the OS is not booting automatically from the new HD, either when it is connected through the USB or when it is in the HD slot.

Anyone have any ideas at all as to what I can try? Could I attach both the old and the new, having booted from the old, and try to remove the old from the slot and see if I can run windows just with the new attached through the USB?

Would really appreciate any advice...

Overheal

Cremo wrote: »

the HD manufacturers are not decieving you it's simply telling you the truth.

a gigabyte is 1000megabytes.

windows reports a gigabyte as 1024 megabytes which is wrong.

:rolleyes:

You're correct when you refer to the Decimal numeric system, which is what manufacturers will use to calculate their capacities.

However, computers run in binary, where each increment is 1024, not 1000.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte

Creamy Goodness

the OS should report it to be mebibytes and gibibytes not megabytes and gigabytes.

Yeah , but when you purchase an item that is designed primarily for use in a PC and the only way the consumer has of verifying the capacity is via a PC , should the manufacturer not let the consumer know that the capacity will effectively be significantly lower than what it says on the tin ?

they do, they state something like "500Gb hdd * actual formatted capacity less yadda yadda"

Snowbat

nessyguin wrote: »

Yeah , but when you purchase an item that is designed primarily for use in a PC and the only way the consumer has of verifying the capacity is via a PC , should the manufacturer not let the consumer know that the capacity will effectively be significantly lower than what it says on the tin ? It's a given that the PC will read the capacity in the only way it knows how and that is the only measure of capacity relevant to the consumer . When I check how much free space is on a HD and see 8Gb remaining I dont think 'Ah , grand . I've got 9 Gb really' . I know that regardless of the physical capacity the only numbers that matter are the numbers the PC reports . Technically correct but deceptive to the average consumer (billions of them) . If computers counted differently and reported greater capacity than the physical capacity as manufactured I'm sure my 160Gig drive would have a sticker on it saying 175Gig .

Hard drive manufacturers have been using SI (decimal) prefixes to describe capacity since the mid 1970s and they have been very consistant in their usage. It was always understood that the misuse of SI prefixes for binary multipliers applied *only* to memory, while other areas (data transmission, processor speed, hard disk storage) used decimal multipliers. Operating Systems listed disk capacity in decimal digits with no prefix (eg. 6,163,695 bytes) until 1984 when Macintosh Finder introduced binary multipliers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_prefix has some good background on this problem.

Overheal

you'll get the same errors by my reckoning in things like data transmission. Youre still having your connection measure in Mbps/Kbps and if thats the decimal SI (surely) than you're really getting ripped off when your expensive 4Mbps downspeed is really a 3.5 and even then you never see that fully utilized.

AlmightyCushion

Lads can we keep this on topic.

randomguy

Thanks for all the replies - I have since managed to get myself into difficulties, start another thread, get myself out of them thanks to that thread, and am now back to where i started.

So if anyone knows why I seem to have cloned the drive no problem, and it works as an external drive through a USB enclosure, but will not boot to windows when inserted into hard drive slot, please feel free to help out on the new thread.

Thanks.