Laptop Hard Drive Replacement

[Joe Pelonio]

My wife's HP Pavillion Zd7000 has issued the warning "predicted hard drive failure" which I have investigated and found that we will have to replace it soon or risk losing everything.

Apparently the same drive is $69, or double the size for $89. Has anyone used the Apricorn system for this? it looks easy, comes with enclosure, cable and software to mirror the old drive before replacement. Is there any easy way to do this without the apricorn product? Restoring a lot of DVD backups and reloading all programs seems like a pain I can do without.



http://www.apricorn.com/product_detail.php?type=reg&id=1023

[Karlan Talkington]

Never used apricorn but looked over the product. Looks pretty easy to use and not too bad on the cost side. Symantec's Norton Ghost is what I would recommend as I've used it for years as a disk drive clone solution. This will of course double your cost and will not include the handy usb cable and enclosure.

IMHO, I would use the apricorn. The USB enclosure is worth the price of the software as you should be able to use the enclosure for an external drive when not in use as a disk cloner.

And replace that disk soon rather than later or you'll regret it.. Believe me I've suffered data loss more times than I care to count before I started using regular backups. Its a PITA for sure!

Good Luck

[Mike Henderson]

I upgraded the disk in my earlier laptop (to a larger size disk) and used the Apricorn or something just like it. Worked very well and very easy to do. I was left with something I never used again (the external stuff) but it was worth it to get the disk copied over easily.

Mike

[Matt Meiser]

I had to replace the hard drive in my laptop last year. I used Norton Ghost to make an image of the failing one to a USB drive. Then I installed the new drive, booted from the Ghost CD, and restored the image from the USB drive back. The new one was larger and it was handled without issue.

[Thomas Bank]

I have a NewerTech Universal drive adapter (http://www.newertech.com/products/usb2_adaptv2.php) that is similar to the Apricorn but without the enclosure. The Apricorn is just SATA or PATA while the NewerTech model does IDE, SATA, PATA, and ATAPI drives of any size. And from a quick search it seems to be about half the cost of the Apricorn.

[Joe Pelonio]

I have a NewerTech Universal drive adapter (http://www.newertech.com/products/usb2_adaptv2.php) that is similar to the Apricorn but without the enclosure. The Apricorn is just SATA or PATA while the NewerTech model does IDE, SATA, PATA, and ATAPI drives of any size. And from a quick search it seems to be about half the cost of the Apricorn.
I like that better, thanks.

[Kevin Groenke]

I've used Acronis True Image a few times to clone hard drives.
http://www.acronis.com/
Free, simple, does what it needs to do.

You can download a trial version for free, works long enough to make the clone.

As for the new drive, just get a generic enclosure that accommodates the drive type you need for the laptop, put the replacement drive in the enclosure, run Acronis to clone the drive, remove replacement from enclosure and install in laptop, run Acronis to restore clone, get on with life.

You can get an enclosure for $10-$15 and a 160gb 2.5" drive for $50-$70, from NewEgg or similar vendors.

-kg

[Chuck Wintle]

My wife's HP Pavillion Zd7000 has issued the warning "predicted hard drive failure" which I have investigated and found that we will have to replace it soon or risk losing everything.

Apparently the same drive is $69, or double the size for $89. Has anyone used the Apricorn system for this? it looks easy, comes with enclosure, cable and software to mirror the old drive before replacement. Is there any easy way to do this without the apricorn product? Restoring a lot of DVD backups and reloading all programs seems like a pain I can do without.



http://www.apricorn.com/product_detail.php?type=reg&id=1023
Joe,
I would backup all documents and unrecoverable files as soon as possible, i.e. all personal documents, financial files, etc. Do this to a writable dvd or cd because the drive can suddenly expire permanently. I agree its a huge pain to reload the OS and other software but sometimes its just better to start with a fresh copy of windows. During the backup process its possible to start getting corrupted data or no copying at all. :D

[Joe Pelonio]

Joe,
I would backup all documents and unrecoverable files as soon as possible, i.e. all personal documents, financial files, etc. Do this to a writable dvd or cd because the drive can suddenly expire permanently. I agree its a huge pain to reload the OS and other software but sometimes its just better to start with a fresh copy of windows. During the backup process its possible to start getting corrupted data or no copying at all. :D
Yes, that's running now. Unfortunately only a CDW, not DVD, so I bought 50.
So far it's estimated 22 hours. I hope the hard drive holds out that long. Might be worth buying an external hard drive for this.

[Greg Narozniak]

I have used Norton Ghost in the past and it works fine but the choice today seems to be

Acronis True Image

Has won all the editor's choices in the last few years.

[Joe Pelonio]

Help!

I bought an Irocs IR9200 enclosure with USB connection, Western Digital EIDE 160 GB drive, and Disk Copy & Clean Professional software.

I installed everything, booted to the CD as instructed and the copy process started. After about 1/2 hour it stopped, unable to access the new drive. I rebooted to XP and the new drive was no longer recognized. I unplugged the
usb connection from the hub and put it into a port on the laptop itself and started it again. This time it only went 5 minutes before stopping with the same message.

Any ideas?

[Chuck Wintle]

Help!

I bought an Irocs IR9200 enclosure with USB connection, Western Digital EIDE 160 GB drive, and Disk Copy & Clean Professional software.

I installed everything, booted to the CD as instructed and the copy process started. After about 1/2 hour it stopped, unable to access the new drive. I rebooted to XP and the new drive was no longer recognized. I unplugged the
usb connection from the hub and put it into a port on the laptop itself and started it again. This time it only went 5 minutes before stopping with the same message.

Any ideas?
Is there any update available for the new software you installed? To me it seems the old drive may be acting up enough to cause copy problems. Also what is the amount of ram in the laptop?

[Joe Pelonio]

The laptop has 256MB Ram. I went to disk management, and while it shows the old internal as C: and I initialized the new one as F:, it does not show a drive desgnation at all. Also, when I look at the devices it shows the original one as drive 0, the new one as 0 (0) instead of 1 which it shows when running the copy software..

[Chuck Wintle]

The laptop has 256MB Ram. I went to disk management, and while it shows the old internal as C: and I initialized the new one as F:, it does not show a drive desgnation at all. Also, when I look at the devices it shows the original one as drive 0, the new one as 0 (0) instead of 1 which it shows when running the copy software..

Joe,
At this point i would try to reformat the new drive to get it ready to receive data. Can it be done through the new software you have? Leave it plugged into the usb port of the laptop and try to copy the drive again. The drive you are copying to is will eventually be installed into the laptop?

[Joe Pelonio]

The new software will copy or erase only, and you have to boot to it. To reformat I will have to use XP. Yes, it will replace the old one once I copy it

[Phil Thien]

The new drive doesn't need to be formatted in order for the imaging software to do its thing.

Question for you: When the new drives stops being recognized, have you checked by listening very carefully to make certain the drive is still running smoothly?

Sometimes USB ports on notebooks are unable to supply enough current to power a hard drive. The result is the drive will often start pulsing and the BIOS will no longer recognized the drive. Sometimes the drive will just power-off.

Another possibility is infant mortality on either the USB adapter or the new hard drive. Those USB adapters can be fairly unreliable. And hard drives, well, you know hard drives can be unreliable. Even brand new ones.

[Joe Pelonio]

The drive has a red light on one side that indicates it's active, and while that's on it sounds fine, but when it stops the light goes out and the error message displays. The power comes not from the USB data connection but from a separate power cord that goes to another USB port on the laptop.

I'll play with it again some tomorrow.

[Jeff Wright]

You might consider signing up for the online backup service provided by carbonite.com (it costs $49 annually). It is the easiest backup method I have discovered. Once you have your current drive backed up, you could replace your hard drive and then download your backed up stuff from the carbonite site. I understand their site has robust encryption and it backs up your drive in the background while you work on your active files. It is all done automatically; each new or changed file is uploaded without your doing anything.

I have a Dell laptop that has given me blue screens in the past. I have a new drive sitting on the desk waiting for my other one to fail. Then I will install the new drive and restore ALL my files from the Carbonite site.

Do keep in mind that if you have a lot of data on your drive now it will take a while to upload all to the internet. It took me three days to upload about 50 gigabytes.

[Chuck Wintle]

The new software will copy or erase only, and you have to boot to it. To reformat I will have to use XP. Yes, it will replace the old one once I copy it
The drive could be bad as I looked on newegg.com and many customers had drives that failed quite quickly. What if you try and partition the drive first and then do the copy?

[Joe Pelonio]

I can try that, in fact I can try it on another machine. With the enclosure it's supposed to be plug 'n play. If I can write to it and read it on a different one it should be OK and the issue the software. I like Jeff's idea of the web based backup too.

[Joe Pelonio]

Before I try Carbonite, I'd like some opinions on whether it will work. I have gotten the external case/cable with the new drive to work, and have copied files to and from it using the laptop and also a desktop in the shop. When I run the backup software from Acropolis, the mirror image runs until it gets to about 28% then crashes with a "read error". I tired running chkdsk /r /f and it went to 21% on step 4 before locking up (3 hours it sat at 21%).

We did back up all data files to CDs right away, but hate to have to re-install all programs.

Am I correct in thinking that the drive has bad sectors or something and that even if I use online backup like Carbonite it will stop when it hits that place?

One more thing, Acronis allows a total drive backup on CDs. It said it would take 5 days, is that correct, for 39GB? How many CDs would that take? Just curious.

[Chuck Wintle]

Before I try Carbonite, I'd like some opinions on whether it will work. I have gotten the external case/cable with the new drive to work, and have copied files to and from it using the laptop and also a desktop in the shop. When I run the backup software from Acropolis, the mirror image runs until it gets to about 28% then crashes with a "read error". I tired running chkdsk /r /f and it went to 21% on step 4 before locking up (3 hours it sat at 21%).

We did back up all data files to CDs right away, but hate to have to re-install all programs.

Am I correct in thinking that the drive has bad sectors or something and that even if I use online backup like Carbonite it will stop when it hits that place?

One more thing, Acronis allows a total drive backup on CDs. It said it would take 5 days, is that correct, for 39GB? How many CDs would that take? Just curious.
Personally I would reinstall the software from scratch because you may have problems in the current installation. But backup all documents etc and copy them back after.