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headshot
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Posts: 35982
Location: UK
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 Posted: Mon, 14th Aug 2006 10:58 Post subject: Upgrading a laptop hard drive - Help? |
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How do I upgrade a laptop hard drive without having to purchase another copy of Windows? I have an Acer Travelmate laptop with a 40gb hdd and I have just put an 80gb into it only to find out I cannot use my recovery discs to reload the operating system and drivers due to certain partitions not being on the new 80gb hard drive. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
May the NFOrce be with you always.
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pancake
Posts: 1091
Location: England
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| Posted: Mon, 14th Aug 2006 11:10 Post subject: |
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Have you tried creating partitions on the disc first before using the recovery discs
Edit: Guess you want to run a legit copy of windows??
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[sYn]
[Moderator] Elitist
Posts: 8374
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| Posted: Mon, 14th Aug 2006 11:14 Post subject: |
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Im guessing you cant put more than one drive in this model laptop? Some can support more than 1.. I would suggest you buy a portable USB mini hard drive, one of the drives which use laptop drive.. you should be able to pull that apart and use the IDE to USB electronics to connect your new 80GB to your machine at the same time as your old 40GB.. transfer the recovery partitions or the OS and you should be fine..
Bit of a ball ache I guess, might be some better suggestions, but thats the first in my head.
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| Posted: Mon, 14th Aug 2006 11:34 Post subject: |
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Buy an adapter so you can connect both drives to a PATA interface of a pc (they are cheap). Simply copy the partitions from the old to the new drive.
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[sYn]
[Moderator] Elitist
Posts: 8374
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| Posted: Mon, 14th Aug 2006 12:10 Post subject: |
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| whoKnows wrote: | | Buy an adapter so you can connect both drives to a PATA interface of a pc (they are cheap). Simply copy the partitions from the old to the new drive. |
Ah yes, I forgot those things existed lol
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headshot
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Location: UK
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| Posted: Mon, 14th Aug 2006 12:29 Post subject: |
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Well I have a USB hard drive caddy which enables me to connect a 2.5" laptop hdd as an external drive on 2 x USB sockets. That might make life easier.
May the NFOrce be with you always.
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[sYn]
[Moderator] Elitist
Posts: 8374
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| Posted: Mon, 14th Aug 2006 12:54 Post subject: |
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Thats what I would go with assuming installing a new HDD into the caddy isn't going to destroy it, if it will or may you might as well buy the item WhoKnows mentioned.
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headshot
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Posts: 35982
Location: UK
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| Posted: Mon, 14th Aug 2006 14:13 Post subject: |
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Well I booted XP on the old hard 40gb drive and connected the new 80gb externally, created the ACER and ACERDATA FAT32 partitions and set the ACER partition to active on the new drive. Then I copied the contents of the ACERDATA from the 40gb to the 80gb which I assume contains the recovery data which is required for the recovery discs. Put the 80gb in the laptop and booted from recovery disc 1 and it seems to be formatting and reloading the operating system, drivers and factory preinstalled software! It would have been nice to have the primary partition bigger than 30gb tho but that would have meant using NTFS and Im not sure if that would work so Ive got 3 partitions on the drive.
May the NFOrce be with you always.
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[sYn]
[Moderator] Elitist
Posts: 8374
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headshot
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