backup restore to new hard-drive

[kwilliams]

Hi All, I have an Acer notebook with Vista SP2 oem . I intend to upgrade the
internal drive from 80 to 500 GB but as the machine came with an early
version of Vista home premium pre-installed I do not have a Vista cd to
reinstall the os only a recovery dvd. I have a free version of Macrium
reflect that I use to make an image of the comlete C: drive. Is it possible
to swap hard drives and copy this image to the new hard drive without any
prior formatting or os loaded on it.

TIA Keith

 

[Rick Rogers]

Hi,

I'm not familiar with that particular product, but if it works like most
imaging software then you should be able to do this.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Richard Urban]

Hi All, I have an Acer notebook with Vista SP2 oem . I intend to upgrade
the internal drive from 80 to 500 GB but as the machine came with an early
version of Vista home premium pre-installed I do not have a Vista cd to
reinstall the os only a recovery dvd. I have a free version of Macrium
reflect that I use to make an image of the comlete C: drive. Is it
possible to swap hard drives and copy this image to the new hard drive
without any prior formatting or os loaded on it.

TIA Keith

The copy function of most imaging utilities is used to copy directly from
one hard drive to another when both are connected to the computer
simultaneously - mainly desktop computers that allow for 2 or more drives.
Many have placed a new drive in an external USB enclosure and performed a
copy that way. The 3 times I have tried it I ran into problems in that the
new drive would not boot when placed in the laptop.

I have had success in creating an image file on an external drive. I then
place the new drive in the laptop and restore the image to the new drive.
This seems fool proof for me.

Just another way of doing it if you also have problems with the copy
process.

 

[DL]

Generally you image to an external connected drive, immediately shutdown on
completion, swap drive and reboot.
Acronis TI has a fully functioning trial for download, always worked for me

 

[Jim]

Can't help you with the specified program, but surely the fine manual tells
you how to get your task done.

I use ATI, and here is how I have performed this task:
1. I use ATI to create a backup file on another drive. This backup
contains all partitions.
2. I use ATI to make a recovery CD. Note that it is also possible to give
a BartPE CD the ability to read/write ATI backup files.
3. I replace the existing boot disk with another that is bigger.
4. I get my computer to boot from the recovery CD.
5. I then restore the backup to the new system disk.
6. Finally, I boot from the new system disk.
It takes about 20 minutes to make the backup file.
It takes about the same time to make the recovery CD.
It takes somewhat longer (about 30 - 45 minutes) to restore the backup to
the new disk. ATI has the ability to expand the partitions on the new disk
as needed (i.e. the new partitions do not need to be the same size as those
on the old disk).

Jim

 

[Poutnik]

Hi All, I have an Acer notebook with Vista SP2 oem . I intend to upgrade the
internal drive from 80 to 500 GB but as the machine came with an early
version of Vista home premium pre-installed I do not have a Vista cd to
reinstall the os only a recovery dvd. I have a free version of Macrium
reflect that I use to make an image of the comlete C: drive. Is it possible
to swap hard drives and copy this image to the new hard drive without any
prior formatting or os loaded on it.

TIA Keith

I use Mecrium Reflect Free for regular weekly backups
of system vista home premium partition to image on the 2nd physical
disk.

After 1 or 2 montly of this custom I was very lucky,
because my 400 GB SATA II ACHI suddenly died.
( probably electronics, no acoustic or S.M.A.R.T. warnings ).

I had ready from the past
Linux based Macrium Reflec Recovery boot CD with nice GUI.
the CD was leading me by very convenient way
to deploy few days old system partition image
to a newly bought SATA II 250 GB disk of other vendor.
( I cannot tell now old and new vendor name )

I was even asked if I wanted to change partition size
before restoring to the new disk.
I was also asked if master boot record
should be newly created, or the old, stored in image.

After obvious partition check Vista was ready again,
just little surprised it is running on a different disk.

 

[kwilliams]

Thanks for reply poutnik, seems from your experience of Macrium reflect will
do the job for me. Reassuring that someone has used the same program and it
worked OK.