Copy laptop hard drive

[Valv]

My daughter has to send in her Dell laptop for motherboard replacement.

Is there any way to copy the entire had drive to another ? Like a mirror image ?

On a desktop I can plug them both in, but not on a portable.

[jac714]

There are a variety of software products out there that will make an image of your drive.

Norton Ghost is one but I am sure there are others out there.

[Tator2k]

Ghost is the best for personal use and is pretty easy to use.

[Valv]

Where does it make the image ? on the HDD or do I have to save it elsewhere on the network ?

Thanks

[MN Mike]

Valv,

Are you looking to protect her data incase it comes back from Dell wiped out or get's lost in shipping?

If you're looking for a short term ' insurance policy ' there is a program out there called Casper 7.0, it's a 30 day trial and does an exact copy to the hard drive you tell it to, so if you had to, you could drop that hard drive into her laptop and it would fire up and be exactly how it was when it was shipped out.

Acronis is another popular program too and it works well.

Mike

[jac714]

Yes Valv you need to store the drive image on different media, depending on size you may be able to use a dvd or you might need an external HDD.

[Shack]

Depending on how your version of Windows and Dell backup utilities (Assuming Windows), you already have a hidden recovery partition (roughly 10g) on your drive C:.

In this situation, again depending on the above, there is no real reason you need to download and install anything. XP up to Win 7 have backup and system imaging options built in.

If you navigate yourself to this area:

Control Panel\System and Security\Backup and Restore

You will find options such as Backup, System Restore, Create a Recovery Boot Disk, Create a System Image and so on. Choose your poison and backup accordingly, making sure you is cloning a full system image if you want this. If backing up just the system or your personal files, then go with recovery or file by file backup. Now would a good time to CREATE a set of recovery disks for your PC if you do not have them. Creating a set of recovery disks will not backup or include your personal files though, only the recovery utilities only.

If the repair facility is loading the OS and you just want to "backup" certain files such as bookmarks, docs, folders, directories, etc... Then choose a Windows backup option.

If you "are" backing up over a network, then there is a good chance the network server/storage will host the backup mentioned above software.

Depending on the amount of data you are backing up, using some r or rw DVD's could work. They are limited to only 4 GB though. Another cheap option would be to use a formatted USB flash drive/memory stick. You can format one as a backup hard drive w/boot options or just a storage disk. Office Max had 16~18 GB stick on sale for $20 a couple weeks back. If you start getting around the $50 mark, an external hard drive with 500 GB starts looking good.

Word of caution! If you have XP, perform the XP backup, it will output a single large .bkp raw file. If by chance Valv's daughter is upgrading to Win 7 during this, I would suggest another method of backing up with Windows. What happens is Win7 does not farewell when pulling an XP .bkp file in. Basically you have to install the XP .bkp file to its own hdd as a system, then either use Windows Easy Transfer or manually pull the needed files over. Win7 will take the files themselves in with no problem. I have had to do this a couple months back so doing some research might lead to new TechNet solution.

I assume Valv knows this but the big four:

Create a Backup of your personal files and folders

Create a system image

Create a "full" system image (clone)

Create a recovery disk

Are all different, but at the same time equally as important. It is a common mistake people make by burning a live or system image but only to find out they mirrored the systems image perfectly. 99% of the time finding out after the fact that it included only this and none of their personal files. Draw back to using Windows I guess. Just make sure what options you check include the kind of back you want.

My Preferred Method: When failure is pending I backup/copy all active users’ directories and folders to our home network system or a stand-a-lone USB drive. I then restore the OS using the recovery disk(s) and hidden recovery partition if possible. If the recovery partition is corrupt or damaged, I have a backup of it on the network system. This puts me back to a new and out-of-box state so everything and my registry are fresh. Most times I just keep all the old files in storage unless I need them. I then mirror those files on to either a RAID 1 or RAID 5 system for safe keeping.

The third party options being mentioned above come in handy for the long haul or to keep going on a bi-weekly or monthly, set and forget, backup schedule. Heading over to your HDD's manufacturer website first to see what they have. Most of them have backup software and most times it is “free". Not only free, but these are overall the best options as they work properly with your HDD's specs.

Any good backup or file manager will do. They all seem too good a good job. Nero was pretty good to me. Only downside was bringing almost too good. Default setup included Nero backing up daily to a single folder. Great! Wrong. Open the folder to a whole directory filled with folders, with two to three times the sub folders. A week or two of hand picking later, I was able to get everything back to being organized.

[masoct3]

+1

I use windows backup and never had a problem. Ghost is great as well.

[RuKiddingMe]

Personally, I would pull the HD and hold on to it, if Dell is replacing the mobo they will have their OWN HD on hand to test the mobo after installation and will have no need to use yours. The mobo should be identical to the one they are replacing, because most of Dell components are built and designed for that specific model or series.

[pureinsanity]

Yup, if you are sending your laptop in they tell you to pull the laptop battery as well as and NIC cards and your hard drive. Take the hard drive out and send it in.

The fine print even says if you send that stuff you might not get it back and its not their fault.

RuKiddingMe is right, they have everything their they need to do to test the mother board. Everything at dell is plug and play basically....

[Valv]

Well good news. Thank you all for the replies.

I discovered the 2.5 laptop drives have same Sata connectors as the standard 3.5. I plugged both new and old one into my old desktop and mirrored the image from one to the other using the mfg utility program and she's good to go now.