Cloning T400 hard drive

I'm looking to upgrade my 250G 5400 HD to a faster 320G 7200 HD and wanted to see if there was a tutorial to make the swap as easy as possible.

I've also made RESCUE & RECOVERY and PRODUCT RECOVERY DVD's, but am unsure about what they do and where they come in during the upgrade process.

Any help, suggestions, pointers would be greatly appreciated.

 

ATI will not restore Thinkvantage button on a Vista T400. See here.

 

indrek,
thank you for the quick overview.

I will be also be using Acronis; can you clarify:
"2) create a bootable rescue CD in your backup app"

How do i do this?

I managed to clone my hard drive using Acronis, but when i swapped out HD, i recieved a "DISK READ ERROR". Could this be becuase i don't have the bootable CD?

 

When you did the clone, was the original drive in your thinkpad and the new drive in an enclosure?

If this is the case, you need to do this in reverse. Original drive in enclosure, and new drive in thinkpad. Boot off your usb drive and then clone it. At least thats what I remember reading a while back.

 

SUCCESS!!

Thank you Indrek for your clear/concise instructions on the process.

Everything is up and running without any hiccups. I now have to go back and expand the partition (will be using partition magic), as it Acronis mirrored the 250G onto the 320G, and i have about 70G of unallocated space available.

Thanks again for all your help

 

Would any of you be able to help me create a bootable rescue CD for XP? I've got a T400 and will be swapping the HDD's soon.

Thanks

 

jw do you have any errors/slowdowns do to your hd being cloned?

 

none whatsoever.

If anything, the upgrade from 5400 to 7200 was very noticeable for the apps/programs i use.

My only problem now is deleting the Lenovo partition on the original drive to free up some space. Anyone know of a good program i can use to reformat the "secret" partition?

TIA

 

Unfortunately no. When in Disk Management, i'm able to see the partition (in black, while everything else is in blue) but right clicking it doesn't offer me the option to format. The HD is in an external enclosure btw.

I was able to use Acronis to increase the useable partiion, but i still have roughly ~3 gigs of space allotted to LENOVO.

 

You didn't say what version of the os you were running and I think it most important in this case. If you are running vista I can help you.

1.) Make current backups.
2.) boot and boot the Repair section vista that runs as menu before the OS boots
3.) Find the two partitions that you dont wan't and delete then with the paritition deletion tool
4.) Expand the existing partition to include the two you just deleted.

 

Yes, I'm running Vista now.

I want to format the external hard drive (in separate enclosure). Will Vista recognize the external HD when i reboot VISTA with teh menu option?

 

yes, it will.

 

OK, will give it a try later today.

thanks for the help and suggestions!

 

Your welcome.