[wellylug] hdd transfer

Ewen McNeill wellylug at ewen.mcneill.gen.nz
Fri Sep 5 15:52:38 NZST 2003


In message <1062718230.3f57cb16c46a3 at www.paradise.net.nz>, Jeremy Z Butler writes:
>I'm looking at changing hard drives in my laptop. i.e. shifting from a 
>6GB to a 20GB drive. 

The last few times I've done this, I've done it by taking the drives
out of the laptop, putting both of them in 2.5" (laptop) to 3.5" (PC)
adapters in another PC, and then just copying the drives literally
across.  (I tend to copy it from Linux, using tar -- Windows 98 should
survive this _providing_ the drive goes back into the same laptop.)

You can also usually do it by copying everything off the drive onto tar
files on the network, installing Linux on the new drive in the laptop,
and then copying everything back.  (You need to do the copying in Linux;
windows really doesn't manage to do the copying accurately enough for
this -- but Linux can copy the Windows partition like this and it works
fine.)

>And with a laptop what is the actual basic physical procedure? i.e. I 
>assume theres only space for one hard drive at a time?? hmmm.

Yup, there's generally only space for one drive at a time.  A few
(rather uncommon) laptops support a drive in an expansion bay.

A couple more ideas:
- USB laptop drive enclosures work reasonably well (but they're _slow_
  if it's only USB 1.1 -- 12 Mbps = 1.2MBps = fractions of the speed of
  the hard drive -- so leave it going over dinner, a movie, etc)

- Firewire laptop drive enclosures work very well if your laptop has
  Firewire (mine does, and the drive feels as fast as it was when it was
  in the laptop directly -- 6GB should copy in 20 minutes or less)

If you're not used to the procedure then it may be easier to pay someone
else to do it for you -- a lot of places will sell you the drive, install
the new drive and copy the data over for you for a small extra fee.

Ewen



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