Swapping hard drive from T60 type 1951 to T60 type 2007

[koenfucius]

My main notebook is a T60 type 1951. The backlight (or the inverter) is faulty (the screen has a red hue, and if I operate it at anything higher than the lowest brightness setting, the backlight just cuts out), and I need to send the machine back for repair (thankfully it's still under warranty).

I have a spare machine, a T60 type 2007, and I am wondering if I can just plug the hard drive from the faulty machine into the spare one without any risk of screwing anything up, or of anything not working.

I've looked on the net to see if I could figure out what the difference is between the two types, but I've not had any success. The only apparent difference between the two is that the faulty machine has a DVD multi-recorder (Matshita DVD-RAM UJ-842 according to the device manager), and the spare one a DVD/CDRW (Matshita DVD/CDRW UJDA755 according to the device manager).

So: is it safe for me to simply remove the hard drive from the faulty machine before returning it for repair and simply swapping it for the drive currently in the spare machine?

Many thanks in anticipation!

[mgo]

My main notebook is a T60 type 1951. The backlight (or the inverter) is faulty (the screen has a red hue, and if I operate it at anything higher than the lowest brightness setting, the backlight just cuts out), and I need to send the machine back for repair (thankfully it's still under warranty).

I have a spare machine, a T60 type 2007, and I am wondering if I can just plug the hard drive from the faulty machine into the spare one without any risk of screwing anything up, or of anything not working.

I've looked on the net to see if I could figure out what the difference is between the two types, but I've not had any success. The only apparent difference between the two is that the faulty machine has a DVD multi-recorder (Matshita DVD-RAM UJ-842 according to the device manager), and the spare one a DVD/CDRW (Matshita DVD/CDRW UJDA755 according to the device manager).

So: is it safe for me to simply remove the hard drive from the faulty machine before returning it for repair and simply swapping it for the drive currently in the spare machine?

Many thanks in anticipation!

Are both machines running Windows XP?

Have you considered simply copying your documents and other files to an external USB drive and then to the spare machine and do your work, rather than swap main drives?

Swapping hard drives like you propose will probabably work. However the spare machine may try to install drivers and things that do not match. It is likely that your spare machine will complain a bit about some mismatches, bit it would still run.

Then, when you return the drive to the original unit, the reverse may happen.

[koenfucius]

Are both machines running Windows XP?

Have you considered simply copying your documents and other files to an external USB drive and then to the spare machine and do your work, rather than swap main drives?

Swapping hard drives like you propose will probabably work. However the spare machine may try to install drivers and things that do not match. It is likely that your spare machine will complain a bit about some mismatches, bit it would still run.

Then, when you return the drive to the original unit, the reverse may happen.

Thanks for the quick reply.

Yes, both machines are running XPP. The problem is that none of the applications on the main machine are on the spare one (it is pretty much still as it came out of the box) - including MS Office, mail applications and what not.

I had been thinking about the difference in drivers (I have since discovered that the graphics interface is different, for example), and so what I have in mind now is to back up the spare machine using Ghost (so I can restore it back to its virgin state when all this is over), and then clone the main machine's HDD onto the spare machine's HDD. Any change in drivers will then happen only on the cloned HDD, leaving the original HDD unchanged, and ready to go back into its home as soon as it's fixed.

But of course the issue related to a difference in graphics and other drivers will still arise as soon as I try to boot from the cloned original HDD on the spare machine - and this is the reason for my question.

[mgo]

Yes, both machines are running XPP. The problem is that none of the applications on the main machine are on the spare one (it is pretty much still as it came out of the box) - including MS Office, mail applications and what not.

I had been thinking about the difference in drivers (I have since discovered that the graphics interface is different, for example), and so what I have in mind now is to back up the spare machine using Ghost (so I can restore it back to its virgin state when all this is over), and then clone the main machine's HDD onto the spare machine's HDD. Any change in drivers will then happen only on the cloned HDD, leaving the original HDD unchanged, and ready to go back into its home as soon as it's fixed.

But of course the issue related to a difference in graphics and other drivers will still arise as soon as I try to boot from the cloned original HDD on the spare machine - and this is the reason for my question.

OK, it sounds to me like you know what you are doing, and have anticipated any complications. Your idea of imaging the drive is a very good one. I do not use Ghost, but it should work fine.

Press on, and go for it. I predict good enough results to allow you to get your work done.

[koenfucius]

OK, it sounds to me like you know what you are doing, and have anticipated any complications. Your idea of imaging the drive is a very good one. I do not use Ghost, but it should work fine.

Press on, and go for it. I predict good enough results to allow you to get your work done.

Thanks - will get going first thing tomorrow and report back. The thing that I am most concerned about is the video driver: what will happen when I boot up the spare machine with the video driver of the main machine?

[basketb]

When you start the spare machine, it will detect the graphics card as new hardware. It may find a suitable driver automatically or it might ask you to provide the location of the driver (might be best to allow it to go to the MS update site to download one, if there is none locally). After that it will reboot and everything is OK (but it may still be a good idea to download and install the latest driver from Lenovo afterwards). If it doesn't find a suitable driver, it will use the default driver, which means either 640x480 or 800x600 resolution until you install the right driver. If that happens, download and install the latest driver from Lenovo.
It really is not a big deal.

[yak]

Another idea would be to create a restore point to easily remove all added drivers after you go back to the other T60.

[koenfucius]

When you start the spare machine, it will detect the graphics card as new hardware. It may find a suitable driver automatically or it might ask you to provide the location of the driver (might be best to allow it to go to the MS update site to download one, if there is none locally). After that it will reboot and everything is OK (but it may still be a good idea to download and install the latest driver from Lenovo afterwards). If it doesn't find a suitable driver, it will use the default driver, which means either 640x480 or 800x600 resolution until you install the right driver. If that happens, download and install the latest driver from Lenovo.
It really is not a big deal.

Thanks very much - that's what I like to hear! At any rate, it will be a lot quicker than installing all my apps on the other machine (not to think about all the settings in each). I'll report back tomorrow.

[koenfucius]

Another idea would be to create a restore point to easily remove all added drivers after you go back to the other T60.

Good tip, thanks. I see you have a 320GB drive in your machine. I take it this was not standard issue - how did you upgrade it? (I am asking because the 80GB on my machine has been insufficient for quite some time, and I have an unused 160GB Toshiba MK16387GSX I'd like to use for this).

[yak]

I see you have a 320GB drive in your machine. I take it this was not standard issue - how did you upgrade it? (I am asking because the 80GB on my machine has been insufficient for quite some time, and I have an unused 160GB Toshiba MK16387GSX I'd like to use for this).

Hardware-wise you can use any HDD in T60 as long as it's a 2.5" SATA drive. You will find many threads about it and on the topic of migrating the OS to the new drive. In my case, I just bought the drive and did a fresh install because I used this opportunity to move from XP to Vista.

[koenfucius]

Hardware-wise you can use any HDD in T60 as long as it's a 2.5" SATA drive. You will find many threads about it and on the topic of migrating the OS to the new drive. In my case, I just bought the drive and did a fresh install because I used this opportunity to move from XP to Vista.

Thanks again. Once this problem is behind me I'll explore the forum for information on upgrading my HDD.

[koenfucius]

OK, it sounds to me like you know what you are doing, and have anticipated any complications. Your idea of imaging the drive is a very good one. I do not use Ghost, but it should work fine.

Press on, and go for it. I predict good enough results to allow you to get your work done.

You can legitimately claim a place in the gallery of the top predictors of all time: in one word - success!

Not without a few hitches, though: first of all I found that Ghost 2003 can't deal with 1TB USB drives, so using my new external backup drive in this process was out of the question. After some agonizing I decided to be braver still than I had intended, and try upgrading to the larger 160GB HDD I mentioned elsewhere in the same exercise rather than use the spare machine's 80GB HDD.
I used Partition Manager to create three partitions on the spare HDD, each twice the size of the original, and then used Ghost to copy the partitions from the broken backlight machine onto the spare drive. I made one mistake, namely verifying the content of the drive - which attributed drive letters G:, H: and I: to the partitions on the spare drive.
I also had to wrestle with a rogue screw fixing the 80GB drive in the little tray, but once the 160GB was in place, and I had figured out that the reason it hung after booting was that the drive letters were incorrect, a quick fix [again using Partition Manager, to attribute the correct letters C:, D: and E:] later I was entirely in business.
The graphics driver seems to work perfectly fine, so even though the interface has been detected as 'new hardware', I am going to leave well alone.
It's well spooky to see one's familiar desktop appear on a different machine, and I guess quite a few people today will wonder why I am walking around with this wide grin...

Thanks again to all (including yak and basketb) for the help!