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How to Copy Your Laptop Drive in Six Easy Steps
Laptops were originally designed for travel. You had your laptop computer. You had your desktop computer. You weren’t supposed to need a large drive in your laptop so laptop hard drives, like laptop computers, have traditionally been small. Small in physical size and small in storage capacity. Things have changed. Laptops are increasingly taking over the function of primary computer. Operating systems (particularly Windows Vista), applications, and data files (particularly photos and music) are demanding more and more storage space. So, if you have had your laptop for awhile, it’s likely you have begun to feel a bit cramped for space.. Replacing your laptop drive with a larger drive isn’t difficult but it can be quite time consuming (not to mention irritating) to rebuild a new drive from the ground up. It’s much faster and easier to simply migrate your old drive–lock, stock and barrel–to your larger drive. Here’s how you do it. 1. The first thing you’ll need to do is to dig out your laptop’s user manual and find out what type of drive you have in your computer so you’ll know what you need to buy to replace it. Laptops use 2.5″ drives and are normally outfitted with one of two types of drives: IDE (also called Parallel ATA, or PATA) or SATA (Serial ATA). If you cannot locate your manual, try the manufacturer’s website. Most manufacturers provide PDFs of product manuals in the support section of their websites. Note that some manufacturers require a specific brand of drive. If this is the case, be sure to speak with or email your drive source and describe your laptop (manufacturer, model, etc.) to make sure that what you plan to buy will operate properly in your computer. For example, a larger drive may create more heat. Question whether the drive you have selected or the laptop model you are using is capable of dissipating that additional heat. Most companies which sell drives will know what will work and what won’t. Asking the manufacturer for advice may not yield the best results as their replacement drives often tend to be considerably more expensive. 2. Once you have determined which drive to buy, you will need to figure out how to connect the new drive to your computer so you can communicate with it. If you have no way to insert a second hard drive into your laptop (which is usually the case), the most practical way to connect your new drive is via the USB port. As mentioned above, laptop drives come in two flavors, IDE and SATA. The difference between the two drive types is reflected in the connectors they use to attach to your computer. Neither of these will connect directly to a USB port so you will need either: a USB to IDE or USB to SATA adapter. These are quite inexpensive and some even come bundled with both IDE and SATA connectors in one unit. A Google search should quickly bring up whatever models are current. Alternatively, you could use a USB drive enclosure with either USB to IDE or USB to SATA conversion built in. Another possibility is to purchase your replacement drive as an external storage device in the size you need. Data Protection Solutions by Arco’s EzBackup-pd drive, for example, can be ordered in a variety of sizes and comes bundled with backup software that would allow you to put your old drive to use as a backup drive. Again, make sure you know whether the drive inside the enclosure is an IDE or SATA. 3. When your new drive is hooked up via the USB port, the next step is to install drive migration software to migrate the contents of your old boot drive to your new drive. You cannot copy a boot drive by simply dragging and dropping files onto a new drive. The boot drive has a boot partition that is necessary for the proper operation of the drive. This has to be copied to the new drive as well and this won’t happen without migration software. EzMigration, for example, is a very simple, relatively inexpensive, migration software. You install it on your existing drive, follow the easy instructions for copying your drive and very shortly you’ve got an exact clone copy of your boot drive on your larger drive. Once the drive contents has been copied, EzMigration will quickly and easily repartition your new drive to ensure you can access all that extra space on your larger drive. 4. Now you have an exact duplicate, or clone, of your old drive. The drive will be bootable and will act just like your old drive. The only difference is that this copy of your drive has lots more available space. At this point, you will need to power down your computer and go back to your laptop user manual for instructions on removing your old drive. Take particular note of the orientation of the drive (face up/face down) as it comes out of the computer. Also, if your existing drive comes with mounting brackets that must be removed, take note of how the drive fits into the bracket or brackets. 5. Next, you will need to disconnect your new drive from any adaptor device you may have used in order to migrate the drive. If you purchased a storage enclosure, you will need to remove your new drive from the enclosure. You may wish to install your old drive in this enclosure so that you can use it as a storage or backup drive. 6. Install your new drive into your computer and close up the case. Reboot your computer and enjoy all that extra drive space. |
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