New harddrive help please

[ManyBeers]

Sony Vaio laptop with a 20 gb Toshiba drive.(7 year old computer)
Drive layout: 4 partitions in order (all primary)
WindowsXP (8gb)
Ubuntu (4.5gb)
Linux swap (630mb)
Shared ntfs (5.5 gb)approximately.
I have been given a 60gb Toshiba drive that I will replace my 20gb drive
with. Basically I want to image,clone, whatever the 20gb to the 60 gb and
then install it. How do I do this.
I believe I will need an external USB/Firwire external drive enclosure.
Is that correct?

 

[thanatoid]

=?Utf-8?B?TWFueUJlZXJz?=

Sony Vaio laptop with a 20 gb Toshiba drive.(7 year old
computer) Drive layout: 4 partitions in order (all primary)
WindowsXP (8gb)
Ubuntu (4.5gb)
Linux swap (630mb)
Shared ntfs (5.5 gb)approximately.
I have been given a 60gb Toshiba drive that I will replace
my 20gb drive with. Basically I want to image,clone,
whatever the 20gb to the 60 gb and then install it. How do
I do this.
I believe I will need an external USB/Firwire external
drive enclosure.
Is that correct?

That's the simplest way at this point in time - parallel
connections were possible ten years ago IIRC... But those
enclosures are cheap. Just make sure you get an IDE not SATA and
that it will handle a laptop drive. You may need connector
adapters or a special "laptop drive" external enclosure - if
there is such a thing. At worst, just a power supply of some
kind (careful - you don't want to blow up the drive ;-) and the
right cable.

Put in the new drive and using a boot CD which allows you to do
DOS stuff, wipe, f-disk and format the drive into several
partitions - I would suggest about 8 of varying sizes, maybe 10-
15 GBs for C. Then, using a multi-boot utility, set up the Linux
file systems on the partitions you want to use for that. Then,
once it's all ready to go, you can use xxcopy or some other tool
like it (especially for the Linux stuff ;-) to just copy the
EXACT contents of the old partitions. Some tweaking MAY be
necessary, but shouldn't be. Then you have the rest of the new
drive to do whatever you want with - add more data, play around
with BeOS, etc. Keep the old drive as a backup just in case,
unless you have a good DVD-R/CD-R backup strategy.

An alternate way to EXACTLY copy the contents is to use whatever
program you like (xxcopy will do it, as will Acronis etc.) to
make images of the partitions. But you'd have to install XP on
the new XP partition and the xxcopy program to import the image.
Extra step.

I have a feeling you knew all this anyway. In fact you may
correct some of my advice.


--
There are only two classifications of disk drives: Broken drives
and those that will break later.
- Chuck Armstrong (This one I think, http://www.cleanreg.com/,
not the ball player. But who knows. I can't remember where I got
the quote. But it's true.)

 

[ManyBeers]

=?Utf-8?B?TWFueUJlZXJz?=


That's the simplest way at this point in time - parallel
connections were possible ten years ago IIRC... But those
enclosures are cheap. Just make sure you get an IDE not SATA and
that it will handle a laptop drive. You may need connector
adapters or a special "laptop drive" external enclosure - if
there is such a thing. At worst, just a power supply of some
kind (careful - you don't want to blow up the drive ;-) and the
right cable.

Put in the new drive and using a boot CD which allows you to do
DOS stuff, wipe, f-disk and format the drive into several
partitions - I would suggest about 8 of varying sizes, maybe 10-
15 GBs for C. Then, using a multi-boot utility, set up the Linux
file systems on the partitions you want to use for that. Then,
once it's all ready to go, you can use xxcopy or some other tool
like it (especially for the Linux stuff ;-) to just copy the
EXACT contents of the old partitions. Some tweaking MAY be
necessary, but shouldn't be. Then you have the rest of the new
drive to do whatever you want with - add more data, play around
with BeOS, etc. Keep the old drive as a backup just in case,
unless you have a good DVD-R/CD-R backup strategy.

An alternate way to EXACTLY copy the contents is to use whatever
program you like (xxcopy will do it, as will Acronis etc.) to
make images of the partitions. But you'd have to install XP on
the new XP partition and the xxcopy program to import the image.
Extra step.

I have a feeling you knew all this anyway. In fact you may
correct some of my advice.


--
There are only two classifications of disk drives: Broken drives
and those that will break later.
- Chuck Armstrong (This one I think, http://www.cleanreg.com/,
not the ball player. But who knows. I can't remember where I got
the quote. But it's true.)

This is the enclosure I am planning to get:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicat...?EdpNo=3169576&csid=ITD&body=MAIN#detailspecs
This way after I have cloned the drive I can place it in my desktop using
this enclosure. Good idea?

 

[thanatoid]

=?Utf-8?B?TWFueUJlZXJz?=

This is the enclosure I am planning to get:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-det
ails.asp?EdpNo=3169576&csid=ITD&body=MAIN#detailspecs This
way after I have cloned the drive I can place it in my
desktop using this enclosure. Good idea?

Yes, looks good. But:

1) Are you SURE you can connect a LAPTOP drive to it? The
connectors (IIRC what I saw a good while ago) are different.

If "Compatible with 2.5" IDE Hard Drive" means "compatible with
/any/ laptop drive" then you're OK, but I'm not sure if it DOES
mean that.

Look at these pages:
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-5160538.html

http://www.google.com/products?hl=en&q=laptop+drive+connectors&u
m=1&ie=UTF-
8&ei=xYxOS8DmCY6YtgfX0oDiDA&sa=X&oi=product_result_group&ct=titl
e&resnum=3&ved=0CBwQrQQwAg

If you end up having to buy one of these adapters then you may
not need the enclosure at all.

2) Make sure your desktop has SATA ("Connect via SATA (Internal)
interface").

Generally, laptop drives are tiny, thin as all heck, and have
smaller connectors and are not meant to be used in desktops - so
I don't know if any if this will work since you MUST be able to
connect the laptop drive to the standard connector in the
enclosure - unless it IS for laptop drives - the word laptop is
not mentioned ANYWHERE - and/or unless you copy everything off
the 20GB drive onto your hard drive on the desktop first, and
then copy from the desktop onto the new 60GB laptop drive as
described in my first post. And toss the old 20GB if you can't
find adapters, or keep it just in case (see below).

Since I do not see any posts telling me why everything I
suggested is wrong (unless the authors are in my KF ;-) I will
assume I gave you basically correct advice.

Good luck.


--
There are only two classifications of disk drives: Broken drives
and those that will break later.
- Chuck Armstrong (This one I think, http://www.cleanreg.com/,
not the ball player. But who knows. I can't remember where I got
the quote. But it's true.)

 

[Lem]

=?Utf-8?B?TWFueUJlZXJz?=



Yes, looks good. But:

1) Are you SURE you can connect a LAPTOP drive to it? The
connectors (IIRC what I saw a good while ago) are different.

If "Compatible with 2.5" IDE Hard Drive" means "compatible with
/any/ laptop drive" then you're OK, but I'm not sure if it DOES
mean that.

Look at these pages:
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-5160538.html

http://www.google.com/products?hl=en&q=laptop+drive+connectors&u
m=1&ie=UTF-
8&ei=xYxOS8DmCY6YtgfX0oDiDA&sa=X&oi=product_result_group&ct=titl
e&resnum=3&ved=0CBwQrQQwAg

If you end up having to buy one of these adapters then you may
not need the enclosure at all.

2) Make sure your desktop has SATA ("Connect via SATA (Internal)
interface").

Generally, laptop drives are tiny, thin as all heck, and have
smaller connectors and are not meant to be used in desktops - so
I don't know if any if this will work since you MUST be able to
connect the laptop drive to the standard connector in the
enclosure - unless it IS for laptop drives - the word laptop is
not mentioned ANYWHERE - and/or unless you copy everything off
the 20GB drive onto your hard drive on the desktop first, and
then copy from the desktop onto the new 60GB laptop drive as
described in my first post. And toss the old 20GB if you can't
find adapters, or keep it just in case (see below).

Since I do not see any posts telling me why everything I
suggested is wrong (unless the authors are in my KF ;-) I will
assume I gave you basically correct advice.

Good luck.

Presumably, the new-to-you drive has an IDE (PATA) interface and not
SATA. BTW, as long as you're going to the trouble of replacing your
drive, consider buying one that's >60 GB. They're not all that expensive.

The "laptop connector" issue is a a red herring. The drives all have
the same connectors. Typically, laptops have an adapter that matches the
connector on the drive to the connector inside the laptop. All you do
is remove this adapter from the old drive and put it on the new drive.

The laptop adapters that you can buy are used to connect a 2.5" drive to
the IDE ribbon cable typically found in desktops. See
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-5160538.html
http://www.fonerbooks.com/laptop_9.htm (replacing a Vaio drive)

As thanatoid said, before you get the product you mentioned, make sure
that your *desktop* drive bay uses SATA.

Some external enclosures come with drive cloning software:
http://www.apricorn.com/product_detail.php?id=1023&type=reg