Replacement laptop hard drive advice needed

[Soi]

I have a 30 gig hard drive in my laptop and am running out of space. I see that I have 2 solutions to my storage problem:

1. External USB hard drive (around ?120 for 120 gig)
2. Replacement lap top hard drive (I've seen 80 gig for about ?120)

Clearly option 1 represents more gigs for my money, but would seriously reduce the portability of my laptop. So I am leaning towards option 2. However, how could I get the files from my existing lap top hard drive to the new hard drive?

Could I just transfer the entire contents of my existing hard drive to a friend's USB external drive and then swap in a new lap top hard drive, and then reverse the process? Would the new hard drive (with all my files on) then have Windows on and all my settings just like the old one?

Any advice would be appreciated.

[Ciaran]

What you need is drive imaging. This is a program that creates an exact copy of your HDD and you can then put this onto a new HDD and if all goes well the new HDD will be exactly like the old one. The only problem you might face is that the partition might be copied to the image. If that happens you will have to split your HDD into a 30gb and a 50gb.

[Yoshimoto]

That shouldn't be a problem.

I used Norton Ghost at work quite often and it will clone a drive onto a larger model and automatically extend the size of the original partition to fill the one on the new drive.

Your biggest problem is going to be connecting two Laptop Harddisks at once so you can clone the image. I'd suggest using a couple of 2 1/2" IDE drive convertors and doing it on a desktop machine.

[Soi]

Norton Ghost. Mmm.

I just looked at one of their tutorials on their site. It seems you can create a clone via an IP connection. Could I borrow a mate's laptop, chuck my shiny new hard drive in it (perhaps having to install XP and a copy of Ghost on in first) and then use Ghost to clone my hard drive to the one in my mate's laptop.

That would seem easier than having to gain access to a desktop for some reason.

[Yoshimoto]

I must admit that i've never done a clone over a network, but to the best of my knowledge its really simple.

Basically using Norton Ghost you create a boot disk for each Laptop with the Network Card drivers for what ever type of card you have included. Then as far as i know its a case of booting the one with the existing HDD into Host mode and the other machine into Client mode. All being well they should now see each other and away you go. You won't even need to partition or format the new drive let alone install Windows or Ghost on it.

Bear in mind though that copying 30GB over a network will take quite a while.

[Soi]

How long? A couple of hours? I haven't much of an idea about such things.

Would doing what you suggest above make my single partition 30 gig drive grow into a new 80 gig partition? Your earlier post implies that it would.

Final question: is replacing a laptop hard drive a fairly painless process? From memory (though I can't remember why I would have done it before) it is really easy.

[Yoshimoto]

The speed depends on the RPM of the drives and what speed network connection you've got etc but i reckon a couple of hours give or take is about right.

Yeah Norton will automatically enlarge your existing 30GB partition into what ever size the partition is (or the full size of the drive if no partition has been defined yet.)

Laptop HDDs are usually either in a slot somewhere around the sides of the machine or occasionally under the keyboard. If you're really unlucky a few laptops require you to take the machine apart to gain access. Although in all fairness i've probably repaired 1000+ laptops in my time and have only seen a handful that require you to do that.

EDIT - Some of the new Toshiba machines require you to move the DVD Drive from the select bay to get access. Just in case you can't find yours.

[Soi]

Thanks for your help, it has been very useful.