Hard Drive upgrade procedure..help needed

I have recently ordered 320GB 72K hard drive for my R61 laptop. Please let me know how should I proceed so that I do not loose any data from my old hard drive. Will Rescue and Recovery Image from old Hard Drive good enough to to the upgrade..Also will the size of the new partitions increase in propotion or what happens? Please help me.
Thanks
Sagar

 

use something called Acronis True Image...

Also how many partition do you have on your laptop?

 

I have 2 partitions, SWPreload and D: drive right now. My Hard Disk is 100GB and would like to upgrade it to 320 GB.
Also, my Windows 7 license would remain valid when I do this upgrade, is that right? Can I use Rescue and Recovery of Thinkvantage system and make a image of hard disk in an external USB hard disk and recover from that to the new 320 GB drive, am wondering?
Thanks for any information

Sagar

 

I just finished upgrading from an 80gb fdd to a 320 GB fdd successfully.
I used the ThinkVantage Rescue and Restore discs that I created. I didn't need to create and transfer a disc image using Acronis type software.

First, I downloaded all latest drivers and upgrades from Lenovo using the ThinkVantage Update. I made two visits to Lenovo with the Update software to get all the available updates. For some reason, it didn't grab all the updates the first time. The second visit even got the latest BIOS, and FLASHED IT FOR ME - That was great!

Then, I made a full backup of the original hard drive to DVD discs using Rescue and Recovery. It made a startup dvd and 2 data dvd's (disc 1 and disc 2)

Since I started with a new blank drive, the Rescue and Recovery software tries to restore from the "Product Recovery" discs, which I don't have. The fix for this is to install Windows XP on the new drive first. That took about an hour. At first Windows XP didn't find the new hard drive because I forgot to edit the BIOS to change the PCI from AHCI to COMPATIBILITY. After that, Windows saw the drive, and asked me how to format it. I made one partition (C drive) to NTFS.

Windows finished installing, and when it started, it crashed, because I forgot to reset the bios back to AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface)

Windows started ok after that.

The next step was to boot from the "Startup" Rescue and Recovery DVD disc that I made earlier.

The R&R startup examines everything, then asks you what you want to do. I entered Advanced Rescue and Recovery to get to the Full Restore option located on the cd/dvd drive.

After telling R&R that I wanted to restore everything, and not to save any files, it said to insert the LAST disc in the backup set (it was disc 2 in my case). I did that, and the software took over. There were a few computer restarts, and one manual power off that I had to do. The discs had to be swapped in and out as the software demanded, but it was easy to follow.

After about 2 hours, EVERYTHING was back as it was including all my software applications. It even created the hidden (protected) mystery partition that has been discussed to death on this and other forums.

I thought I had to use the disc image procedure using Acronis, or some other such software, but no, the ThinkVantage stuff worked for me. I guess if you don't have access to a Windows XP install disc, then the disc image procedure would be required.

THANKS Lenovo, you came through for me, great job!
http://forum.notebookreview.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

 

OOPS, I didn't insert the Smiley properly, sorry

 

I have also done this recently, using a T61p. I found the commercial imaging software (Ghost & Acronis) to be useless. The "evaluation" versions do not include the features needed to actually use the s/w and I was not willing to buy unless I was sure it would work. I ended up using the open source Clonezilla and it worked great.

The process is very simple, just connect the new drive using a USB drive housing. These are available on Amazon for about $20 and they let you treat any HDD as an external drive.

Next download Clonezilla and make a bootable CD. This is easy to do and is well documented at the CZ site.

Boot the machine off of the CD, and start Clonezilla. Choose "device to device" mode.

Select the source and destination disks carefully, then start the cloning process. You will get a number of warnings that you are about to over-write the destination disk.

After the cloning is done, use XP's disk administrative tools to add a partition that is the size of the "extra" space on the new drive. The cloning itself will only use a partition the size of the original drive, so after all is done you will have a new partition that represents the added space.

I had zero problems using this approach and I now clone my HDD ever week as a bulletprrof form of backup. I bought three identical HDDs (320GB each), and every week I make a rotating clone. I did not lose the "hidden" ThinkPad files as I can still use the Thinkvantage key.

 

I like a31puser's advice. I didn't know about Clonezilla, wish I had.

I did exactly what you are doing, but I missed a few steps, and paid the price. I upgraded my T61 to a 320gb HD but forgot one important step. That is....

1. Make the recovery CD/DVD set. In fact, make them twice. I am not kidding.

2. Buy an external hard drive enclosure. I got this one from newegg but there are many more like it. It requires no external power supply and it works great.

3. Put your old drive in the enclosure.

4. Put the new drive into the laptop.

5. Restore your system from the CD/DVD set you made in Step 1 by booting off of the restore CD.

6. Now you have a fully restored laptop on the new drive. Run auto-update and patch it up fully. Then, plug your old hard drive, now safely housed in the external enclosure you bought, into the laptop. Drag n' drop your old files to the computer.

An external enclosure is your best friend. If you need your old data just plug it in. Keep it around as a backup. When you're 100% sure you no longer need it, just erase it and keep it as a backup drive. There's tons of software you can use to automate backups of your important stuff.

Two more pieces of advice -

- will your Windows 7 license work? Yes, if you restore from the cd/dvd set you made.

- how to backup your files? You don't need to, the original drive is available in the external enclosure. BUT, to be safe, try some backup software to copy your important files to DVD before you try ANY of the above. Can't really recommend one in particular.

 

Let us know how it goes!