Looking at upgrading to bigger hard drinve in laptop

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 03:51:48 Z

Greetings

I am looking to upgrade my hard drive in my gateway laptop, currently running Vista Home Premium. I intend to clone (from a 60 GB hd)to a bigger hard drive (at least a 250 GB) and install the new hardware in the machine.

What "gotchas" and little annoyances am I goning to face doing this?

No other hardware has or will be changed in the laptop for the next year or 2...

Looking at upgrading to bigger hard drinve in laptop

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 04:37:12 Z

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/quick-start/activation-faq.aspx

Quick start: Activation FAQ

The worst that can happen is that you may have to Activate by phone.

http://support.gateway.com/s/SOFTWARE/Medialess/FAQ/SUPPAGE01su44.shtml

Contact Gateway Support at the above link about how you are going to reinstall Vista, as your Recovery Partition will be gone!
If you do not have a Vista DVD to reinstall, ask them to send you one, for a small $ cost, just in case of problems.
Your cloning process may fail, have a backup plan..

Try this for Phone Activation:

1. Click Start, and in the Search box type: slui.exe 4

2. Press ENTER on your Keyboard

3. Select your Country.

4. Take the Phone Activation option, and hold on for a real person.

Cheers.

Mick Murphy - Microsoft Partner

Looking at upgrading to bigger hard drinve in laptop

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:28:02 Z

Thanks for the reply.

So as far as I understand it...the only 2 mountains I have to surmount is Activation and the recovery partition? Sounds not too, too bad after reading your links.

I do have the original Gatteway Win XP disk that came with the laptop and I still have the Vista Home Premium (upgrade) dvd I used to upgrade my laptop. Is there not a way to clone the entire contents of the disk...including the Recovery Partition, so I would not have to run the Vista install again?
My preferred cloning software is Acronis True Image. ( I guess I'll have to go looking at their site when I get a chance....)

ttfn

Looking at upgrading to bigger hard drinve in laptop

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:57:31 Z

Why not just buy a USB external drive, they make some very small.

http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/368883/Transcend-StoreJet-hard-drive-250-GB/

Rob - Supporting Member, Cascade Bicycle Club P.O. Box 15165 Seattle, WA. 98115-0165 206-522-3222 and 24 hr hotline 206-522-BIKE http://www.cascade.org

Looking at upgrading to bigger hard drinve in laptop

Sat, 04 Jul 2009 22:12:41 Z

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/features/backup.aspx

MS has complete backup, but not for Home Premium.

When you buy a new Hard Drive, the Hard Drive Manufacturer provides cloning software for their Product to help you migrate the OS.

Have a delve around their website, and on save having to buy Acronis!

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

Cheers.

Mick Murphy - Microsoft Partner