As mentioned in a previous post, I wanted to upgrade my current 120GB hard drive in my laptop. The process seemed easy enough without actually starting it because I've done upgrades in laptops AND desktops before.
I finally got around to starting the process yesterday (Saturday) even though I purchased the drive on Thursday. I started the process early since I didn't go play tennis but it turned into almost an all-day deal.
The first problem I ran into is when I took the old drive out and put the new drive in. It wasn't recognized with the Toshiba recovery/software/driver CD. My assumption is that the factory CD was specific to the original configuration of my laptop. Weird but not totally inconceivable.
Luckily, I have a WinXP Pro Full CD. I popped that sucker into the disk drive. That's when I ran into the second problem. It only recognized up to 131GB of the 320GB. Now, I know that 320GB is never actually 320GB. In fact, I have a Western Digital 320GB Passport Portable USB Drive that only registers 298GB. So, I knew I was going to be shorted on the size recognition but not this shorted!
I put the 120GB back in and started thinking of options. I remembered seeing some backup program on the Start Menu. I think it's like Start - All Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Backup. This worked fine...at first. It takes roughly 3 1/2 hours to create a backup this way and then it ends by saying something like, "Sorry, you don't have a floppy drive so an ASR backup may not work." WTF? When is the last freaking time YOU saw a notebook with a 1.44" floppy drive? I got a backup file but I can't get the computer to boot from the floppy since there is none which then will allow me to use the backup file to recreate the image on the 320GB drive. After some intensive Googling, it seems the Internet consensus says that the ASR backup will not work without a floppy. Some did give workarounds to get the files that were created for the floppy on a network computer that does have a floppy, burn the files from that computer to a floppy and voila! The freaking problem is there is STILL no floppy drive on my notebook. That's when they say, "You can get a USB external floppy drive at any computer store for cheap." Again, WTF? Why do I want to purchase a floppy drive for a one-time in a long-time hopefully the only-time recovery? DUH!
After more Googling, I finally found some solutions for using disk copying/imaging, one-to-one copying software. Most were pay options or free-to-try but I was looking for purely free! I do have a copy of Ghost from work but after installing it, I didn't know what to do or didn't do something correctly or the interface was too confusing so I uninstalled it and tried the options found from Googling. Download.com had a few good choices but many were file syncing or file backup. I wanted full hard drive backup with boot sectors and all that shit so when I removed the old drive, the new drive will just load everything right up like the old drive was still there.
I finally decided on Macrium Reflect Free because it got good user reviews on Download.com and a lot of people recommended it on Lifehacker.com.
Another 3-4 hours and I had an image on an external USB hard drive. I then used Macrium Reflect Free to load the image onto the 320GB hard drive which I had connected via another USB connection. After another 2-3 hours, the image was successfully loaded.
Now, it was go time! Fingers crossed I removed the 120 and replaced it with the 320, turned on the computer and we had boot up. For a second, I didn't know if it worked because the boot up wallpaper and process seemed different than I remembered with the 120 but I waited. Just a little while longer, I had the Windows login screen for my username. I used my fingerprint on my fingerprint reader to log in and voila! I was logged on.
The computer went through some recognizing the new hard drive process after it booted into Windows and said that my computer needed to reboot to complete the installation process of my new hard drive. So, I rebooted and, so far, everything is running good as gravy! I have a hard drive recognized space of 298GB with 200GB available. Booyah!
Other than running to the park with the kids and dog, my Sunday consisted of this and watching the marathon of all the Karate Kid movies. Yep, my Sunday was awesomely entertaining!
I finally got around to starting the process yesterday (Saturday) even though I purchased the drive on Thursday. I started the process early since I didn't go play tennis but it turned into almost an all-day deal.
The first problem I ran into is when I took the old drive out and put the new drive in. It wasn't recognized with the Toshiba recovery/software/driver CD. My assumption is that the factory CD was specific to the original configuration of my laptop. Weird but not totally inconceivable.
Luckily, I have a WinXP Pro Full CD. I popped that sucker into the disk drive. That's when I ran into the second problem. It only recognized up to 131GB of the 320GB. Now, I know that 320GB is never actually 320GB. In fact, I have a Western Digital 320GB Passport Portable USB Drive that only registers 298GB. So, I knew I was going to be shorted on the size recognition but not this shorted!
I put the 120GB back in and started thinking of options. I remembered seeing some backup program on the Start Menu. I think it's like Start - All Programs - Accessories - System Tools - Backup. This worked fine...at first. It takes roughly 3 1/2 hours to create a backup this way and then it ends by saying something like, "Sorry, you don't have a floppy drive so an ASR backup may not work." WTF? When is the last freaking time YOU saw a notebook with a 1.44" floppy drive? I got a backup file but I can't get the computer to boot from the floppy since there is none which then will allow me to use the backup file to recreate the image on the 320GB drive. After some intensive Googling, it seems the Internet consensus says that the ASR backup will not work without a floppy. Some did give workarounds to get the files that were created for the floppy on a network computer that does have a floppy, burn the files from that computer to a floppy and voila! The freaking problem is there is STILL no floppy drive on my notebook. That's when they say, "You can get a USB external floppy drive at any computer store for cheap." Again, WTF? Why do I want to purchase a floppy drive for a one-time in a long-time hopefully the only-time recovery? DUH!
After more Googling, I finally found some solutions for using disk copying/imaging, one-to-one copying software. Most were pay options or free-to-try but I was looking for purely free! I do have a copy of Ghost from work but after installing it, I didn't know what to do or didn't do something correctly or the interface was too confusing so I uninstalled it and tried the options found from Googling. Download.com had a few good choices but many were file syncing or file backup. I wanted full hard drive backup with boot sectors and all that shit so when I removed the old drive, the new drive will just load everything right up like the old drive was still there.
I finally decided on Macrium Reflect Free because it got good user reviews on Download.com and a lot of people recommended it on Lifehacker.com.
Another 3-4 hours and I had an image on an external USB hard drive. I then used Macrium Reflect Free to load the image onto the 320GB hard drive which I had connected via another USB connection. After another 2-3 hours, the image was successfully loaded.
Now, it was go time! Fingers crossed I removed the 120 and replaced it with the 320, turned on the computer and we had boot up. For a second, I didn't know if it worked because the boot up wallpaper and process seemed different than I remembered with the 120 but I waited. Just a little while longer, I had the Windows login screen for my username. I used my fingerprint on my fingerprint reader to log in and voila! I was logged on.
The computer went through some recognizing the new hard drive process after it booted into Windows and said that my computer needed to reboot to complete the installation process of my new hard drive. So, I rebooted and, so far, everything is running good as gravy! I have a hard drive recognized space of 298GB with 200GB available. Booyah!
Other than running to the park with the kids and dog, my Sunday consisted of this and watching the marathon of all the Karate Kid movies. Yep, my Sunday was awesomely entertaining!
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