transferring to a new hard drive

[SCURaja]

hey all..i have a t42 (23733xu) with a 40gb 5400 rpm. My 60GB 7200 rpm drive finally came in and I would like to replicate this drive onto my new one. I went out and bought a USB enclosure and I have formatted the entire partition to 60gb (ntfs).

What is the easiest way to transfer my entire system to the new drive? Unfortunatley I am at a customer site and i don't have access to any cd's. I have the old rapid recovery..not the new one.. Also, I noticed that in my 40gb drive i have a fat32 partition of 4.54 gb, do i need to put this partition on my new drive? I know that the fat32 partition is to recover the system back to a 'virgin' state and I do want this on my own drive..but i would like the program to put it on for me...

any advice would be great

[bevross]

Rescue & recover can make backup CDs for you. I was told by tech support that the hidden HPA partition will be created automatically with a restore. Apparently this is only true for newer systems (which the T42 is), not older Thinkpads, where there was an option not to create a restore partition.

[egibbs]

Google for drive imaging software.

A random hit - http://www.novastor.com/pcbackup/recovery/irecover.html is self contained (I guess that means you can run it from a floppy), supports imaging to a larger drive, and has a downloadable free trial, though they don't say if the free trial is fully functional.

Personally I use DriveImage, but it's a bit expensive for a one time transfer.

Ed Gibbs

[Zeitgeist]

Rescue & recover can make backup CDs for you. I was told by tech support that the hidden HPA partition will be created automatically with a restore. Apparently this is only true for newer systems (which the T42 is), not older Thinkpads, where there was an option not to create a restore partition.

Just download the software for the pre-T42 models:

http://www-306.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... IGR-4Q2QAK

[sktn77a]

Try to get the recovery CDs for your thinkpad either from IBM or from some other kind soul (if you are unable to make a set yourself). Install the 60Gig drive and then load the recovery CDs. Put the old 40gig drive in the USB enclosure and then transfer any data files from that drive to the new drive. You'll have to load any other application software manually. The recovery CDs create a hidden recovery partition.

[Riddil]

You could give this a try:
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-50889

Never used it myself, but the description sounds like it's what you're looking for.

[SCURaja]

My solution..was to install the new version of rescue and recovery..then use a spare usb drive..and backup my entire system to it...then install the new hard drive in the laptop..and i'm restoring it now..hopefully it's an identical copy..which is what i'm hoping for..

[CraigR]

If you are thinking of using DriveImage...

I used DriveImage to backup my new T42P to my network, used an XP Pro CD to repartition the HD or my TP ( removing the SERVICE partition ), then tried to restore the Image back to my new C: partition.

I had some problems that were hard to figure out because Symantec have bought out PowerQuest and seem to have removed all of the support documentation for DriveImage as they want everyone to use their Ghost software.

What I didnt realise is that DriveImage seems to get upset if you backup a partition and then try to restore it to a smaller partition - even if it will easily fit ( my backed up partition was about 55GB but only about 7GB used - my new partition I was trying to restore to was 30GB )

DriveImage also gives you the option to restore files and folders rather than a whole image and I'm pretty sure that I can restore to my smaller Partition using this process - I certainly got past the other error message but ran out of time to actually do the restore last night.

I believe DriveImage has a Disc Copy option which might be easier to use in your particular case.

regards,
Craig