Upgrading the Hard Drive in a 2007 Samsung R70

Hello,

I have a Samsung R70 laptop (NP-R70A001/SUK) from 2007, running on Vista Home Premium SP2, upgraded to 2Gb RAM. I'm looking into possibly upgrading the 120Gb Hard Drive (2x 50Gb partitions & 10Gb recovery) to something nearer 500Gb (Western Digital Mainstream Laptop drive), using a drive caddy for the old/new drive.

What would be the best option for transferring the data safely to a new drive for this relatively vintage laptop? Is cloning with a program like Acronis the best solution (I have seen threads about Acronis' problems with later versions of Samsung Recovery Service - my R70 uses SRS2), or is a fresh OS install on a new drive better?

I have 2 system CDs with the laptop, 1 for Windows, the other for additional software. Would I be right in thinking that these would only work with a correct Vista install on the hard drive?

Regards,

Ian.

 

Hi Ian. I am sorry it took a few days to respond to this. As you may know, we had the site in read-only mode over the weekend for migration to a new platform.

I have no personal experience with SRS2, but I would assume it is no less sensitive than later SRS versions to the issues of cloning with 3rd party tools. IOW most likely SRS would be lost if you use Acronis. Only you can decide whether preserving SRS2 is important to you (including its factory image, which I presume contains Vista). My guess is that the Admin Tool feature might also be available in SRS2 (but hidden) which is then your best shot at backing it up. Again, if you choose to do so.

I would study the following links from the Samsung Forum Sticky List:

Cloning or re-imaging a new SSD/HDD
Backing up and re-creating Samsung Recovery Solution

What I would do in any case is to make sure you have saved Windows drivers for this... well, mature mature laptop ( ) so that you can make a clean install of Windows if need be. I see that Samsung has drivers posted here (grab them while you can). Also, SRS2 (like later SRS versions) may have a feature to backup System Software onto a DVD or USB stick. Having that makes clean installation quite easy.

 

2007 is around the time that notebooks were changing from IDE to SATA hard drives.

I would recommend that you check the drive model number and Google the specs. If still uncertain then check the connector. If it uses pins (the IDE connector) then your upgrade options might be limited.

John

 

Using Piriform Speccy, I've determined that the hard drive is a 120Gb Fujitsu MHW2120BH, using a SATA-150 interface (info from a Fujitsu datasheet).

Regards,

Ian

 

And the Fujitsu datasheet also says SATA. So that possible obstacle is out of the way.

If the Vista is up-to-date (to whenever Microsoft stopped supporting it) and still running OK then cloning will be easier than a clean install and then looking for all the drivers and other updates. If you use a cloning program to make an image onto an external drive then restore that image onto the new HDD you can also keep the backup image should you ever need to redo the restoration. This would mean that you don't need to worry about whether SRS works. Another option would be to first make an image of the HDD in its current condition, then run SRS to restore the drive to the factory condition and make another image of that.

Also grab a copy of the R70 drivers and software offered by Samsung in case they disappear.

John