How to replace hard drive for C: partition

[Steven L.]

I would like to replace the internal hard drive holding the C: partition
with a much faster hard drive.

Can someone walk me through the steps I would need to make this work.
I've got the original Windows 7 DVDs, of course.





-- Steven L.

 

[Drew]

I would like to replace the internal hard drive holding the C: partition
with a much faster hard drive.

Can someone walk me through the steps I would need to make this work.
I've got the original Windows 7 DVDs, of course.





-- Steven L.

Laptop or desktop? What drive are you considering? Are you going to
use a solid state drive or stick with a regular drive? Recently copied
my C: drive to a new solid state drive. The included software swapped
everything and also renamed the new drive C: and changed my old one to
L:. It took about 10 to 15 minutes to accomplish it. After a couple of
weeks I formatted the old drive and use it for data storage now.

 

[SC Tom]

I would like to replace the internal hard drive holding the C: partition with a much faster hard drive.

Can someone walk me through the steps I would need to make this work. I've got the original Windows 7 DVDs, of
course.

Get yourself a copy Acronis True image or some other disk imaging software, and an external hard drive at least as large
as the drive you have now. Make an image of your current drive. Restore that image to the new, faster drive. Put it in
your PC and take the old drive out. Boot up, be happy

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

Get yourself a copy Acronis True image or some other disk imaging
software, and an external hard drive at least as large as the drive you
have now. Make an image of your current drive. Restore that image to

Note that in order to be able to do the restore, you will have to make
something bootable, probably independent of the image. (Any good imaging
software should lead you through making the bootable something.)

the new, faster drive. Put it in your PC and take the old drive out.
Boot up, be happy

Will it require reactivation?

 

[SC Tom]

Note that in order to be able to do the restore, you will have to make something bootable, probably independent of the
image. (Any good imaging software should lead you through making the bootable something.)

ATI and most others allow the creation of a boot CD to handle that part of it. In fact, I boot from the CD to create my
images since it's faster than doing it from within Windows.

Will it require reactivation?

Never had to yet. Of course, if a new drive is the latest piece of hardware and causes the counter to click over to the
magic number, it might require activation. Either an internet connection or a 2 minute phone call will take care of that

 

[.22Cal Dood]

Get yourself a copy Acronis True image or some other disk imaging software, and an external hard drive at least as large
as the drive you have now. Make an image of your current drive. Restore that image to the new, faster drive. Put it in
your PC and take the old drive out. Boot up, be happy

the only caveat with true image is that I have found it doesnt like
drives of different sizes. it has trouble resizing the partition. i
have TI 2011 and wanted to upgrade to TI2012. i had to ask for a
refund because it was so buggy, my pc would not boot up after
installing it. sometimes newer isnt better

 

[SC Tom]

the only caveat with true image is that I have found it doesnt like
drives of different sizes. it has trouble resizing the partition. i
have TI 2011 and wanted to upgrade to TI2012. i had to ask for a
refund because it was so buggy, my pc would not boot up after
installing it. sometimes newer isnt better

I haven't run into that problem with ATI 2010 Home, and since it works well for me, I have no need to upgrade (I still
run XP for the same reason ). I also prefer using the boot CD for creating/restoring images since nothing is
installed in Windows, and it runs on any OS, be it some flavor of Windows, Mac, or Linux.

If you are doing simple imaging, there are even free versions available from the drive manufacturers:

ATI for WD drives http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119&wdc_lang=en
ATI for Seagate drives http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/discwizard
ATI for Maxtor drives
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...toid=7add8b9c4a8ff010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

And for the occasional times I had resizing problems with the freebies, I used another freebie:

Easeus Partition Manager http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

And if you don't care for ATI, there are plenty of other imaging products, many of them free or trial/share ware.

 

[Joerg Jaeger]

the only caveat with true image is that I have found it doesnt like
drives of different sizes. it has trouble resizing the partition. i
have TI 2011 and wanted to upgrade to TI2012. i had to ask for a
refund because it was so buggy, my pc would not boot up after
installing it. sometimes newer isnt better

Just like to mention that you can use also Clonezilla. Worked great in
my case.

--
ACCESS DENIED...

/\_/\
____/ o o \
/~____ =ø= /
(______)__m_m) el cato

 

[pjp]

I haven't run into that problem with ATI 2010 Home, and since it works well for me, I have no need to upgrade (I still
run XP for the same reason ). I also prefer using the boot CD for creating/restoring images since nothing is
installed in Windows, and it runs on any OS, be it some flavor of Windows, Mac, or Linux.

If you are doing simple imaging, there are even free versions available from the drive manufacturers:

ATI for WD drives http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119&wdc_lang=en
ATI for Seagate drives http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/discwizard
ATI for Maxtor drives
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.j...toid=7add8b9c4a8ff010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

And for the occasional times I had resizing problems with the freebies, I used another freebie:

Easeus Partition Manager http://www.partition-tool.com/personal.htm

And if you don't care for ATI, there are plenty of other imaging products, many of them free or trial/share ware.

I've used both Trueimage 2010 & 2011 and as well the free Macrium
Reflect. All I ever really care about is the image I make for a pc just
after all it's hardware is installed along with the "basic" software I
always use etc. I've not had any real problems with any of them but I
prefer the TrueImage product because it's boot cd allows one to create
an image. I believe the Marcium product enforces you to do an install
for the feature to create the images.

All of them see the external usb drive(s) I use to store these images
and all of them seem to have no problems with differing disk sizes upon
restore (assuming it's a file backup rather than a sector which I never
do) I also never create "partial/update" images but rather it's always a
complete image.

I'm diligent in regular backups compiling everything I download/create
etc. into a folder which gets backed up onto regular data dvd's/cd's as
their max capacity is reached. The dvd's get verified then put away in
cases to only be used when needed. Anything likely to be required in
foreseeable future is also copied to an external usb drive for easy
access.