Thinkpads Forum

OK... I've never done any sort of thing inside a computer.

I've done a search, but I'm not finding any clear cut thread that answers:

"How do I successfully copy and replace my old hard drive?"

I took advantage of the 320gb Hitachi Travelstar sale on ZipZoom ($59), so it is on the way.

I can not believe that I'm already using 135 gigs of my current 160g drive, but for the price... it's worth it to just upgrade to a 320.

I have a T61, T9300, 2g RAM, 160HD, integrated graphics, with XP Pro. I have had it for almost a year, and it is a pleasure to use.

XP is great, but I am finding no problem with Vista on my girlfriend's computer, so I'd like to do a dual boot w/ Vista or "7" after increasing the RAM.

OK, so I don't have a USB/Hard Drive enclosure or one of those brackets for the DVD bay.

**What is the easiest/cheapest way to clone to the new drive so that it boots up nice and easy?

**I'm not sure how to "change my bios", but I have seen that mentioned in another HD thread. Do I need to?...and how?

**Where is the best place to get a reasonably priced bracket? I'm assuming I can use my old 160 HD in the DVD bay. Can I also use the bracket for the cloning process instead of the USB external enclosure thing?

**If I need the external enclosure, what's a good way to buy or get one?

I named this thread very simply so that future "searches" will bring it up for the next newbie.

Thanks,
Bf

I first searched NewEgg for a SATA USB enclosure and got one which 2&3 inch drives fit. I’ve been using True Image for years so used it for my transfer. It is capable of copying and making images, which I do weekly so have no need of R&R. I’m not sure of the easiest ways to do some of the things I do others will pop in with good ideas. I used Partition Magic and formatted the drive and made an active partition and a 100G & a separate one to hold the Image of the first drive. I then use TIs recovery disk and aimed the image made to the second drive, first partition. Do the same for the MBL after the image loads. When completed disconnect one of the drives BEFORE BOOTING. I use a 750G drive to hold my weekly made images and for clutter such as MPs and photos which can result in a C of less than 20G, which gives small quick images.

I would recommend ordering the appropriate official 2nd hard drive adapter (although you might find it cheaper from NewEgg if they carry them) so you can put either the second or original drive in the ultrabay when needed. These are not very expensive, although they might seem so considering what you paid for your 320 GB drive.

I would use Acronis TIH to "clone" (found in the disk utilities section of the program) the C: drive to a second drive in the ultrabay (using the 2nd hard drive adapter). Then you can just remove the original C drive and replace it with the newly cloned drive, using the mounting hardware and rubber rails from the original drive. Then you can use your original drive in the ultra bay with the 2nd hard drive adapter for storing other stuff.

If I were you, I would also buy a second 320 gb drive (especially at the current low price) to use to regularly make clones of your new 320 GB C: drive, using the same easy method as outlined above. That way if you ever have a problem, all you have to do is physically swap in your cloned backup drive for the drive with the problem and you are good to go. Takes less than 5 minutes and a small Phillips screwdriver to physically swap the drives. The reason it is nice to have identical sized drives for cloning backups is that you can then use Acronis' easy "automatic" cloning method (quicker & simpler than the program's "manual" method) without having your partition sizes automatically proportionally resized which is what happens when the "automatic" method is used with a drive that is a different size from the original you are cloning, and also because your data will definitely always fit on an identically sized drive.

So, using the 2nd Hard Drive cradle eliminates the need to use the external hard drive housing thing?

Why wouldn't everyone do this? It would be cool to then use my old hard drive for a total of 580gigs of memory.

I'm not going to order another hard drive. It's cheap...and it's convenient, but I'm a tightwad!

BF

I always put the target in my thinkpad's hdd bay and the source in the external USB enclosure and perform the cloning with the open source tool partimage or dd. 100% success rate so far.

Here are some reasons to use the USB enclosure over the ultrabay adapter: The external enclosure permits you to repurpose the old hard drive as a portable storage with other computers. The ultrabay adapter displaces the ultrabay device you may have installed, typically the optical drive.

Thanks. I ordered the external inclosure from NewEgg. I will probably want an ultrabay caddy eventually.

Your opensource suggestion might be a bit fancy for me! Isn't it a Linux thing?

I'll probably try the trial option w/ Acronis.

Kelton, Seagate provides an OEM version of Acronis for free, from the Seagate support web site. In my case it would not recognize the external drive and Seagate support lamed that on the USB enclosure. They gave me a workaround to make it work anyway.

The only problem is that using the "clone" menu choices they said to use, the new drive became bootable and the original drive became NO LONGER BOOTABLE. I haven't gotten back to exploring how to fix that one, since Vista boots differently from the older versions of NT. But apparently either Seagate's OEM version has some messed up menus, or the folks at Acronis haven't mastered YnGlitch yet.

Either way, try the free Seagate version, their free tech support can give you the details on the phone if you need them.

“The only problem is that using the "clone" menu choices they said to use, the new drive became bootable and the original drive became NO LONGER BOOTABLE.” HUH???? I’ve done some cloning and never had that problem.

First let me say I’m a back up paranoid nut as I learned long ago that a drive WILL die sometimes and I detest all that’s involved in loading a new OS including finding lost ser #s and losing mailand stuff. So I’ve been making True Images for years. When I first install a new OS I make an image about every day for a week, which I keep permanently so I can go back to a certain point in the future, something you can’t do cloning. Also I partition the drive into any # of partitions with C being 20-30G in the end, the others are for storage, MPs and photos etc. the big thing is C
being that small results in small and 6-9 min images, I always make full images of C. This does require quite a bit of BU drive space but is worth it to me.
The above regards my desktop but my Thinkpad is the same. It’s more work at the beginning because I needed to get rid of things in C that didn’t need to be in C and took up room. This I did after the transfer so that I could save the original drive as a emergency drive for future need and testing. In the beginning the new drives C space needs to be the size of the original drive. I imaged the original drive to a second partition on the new drive and then used TI rescue disk to recover that image to the C partition. After successful imaging I delete the image and start
moving and deleting things from C into the second or 3rd partition. When C is about where I want it I image it to a different drive which I have for Images. Then I use a drive partitioning app like Partition Magic to slice up the partitions, and no I’ve never had bad results partitioning drives and I’ve done it probably 100 times as I have many drives. Sounds and may be complicated but when finished it’s easy to BU and recover to the time of the last image made, not when the machine was delivered.

Bfskinnerpunk wrote:Your opensource suggestion might be a bit fancy for me! Isn't it a Linux thing?

Yes, partimage and dd are Linux programs. They might not be the most user-friendly tools, but really powerful once you master them. IIRC, Acronis' emergency boot disk is based on Linux too, FWIW.

Bfskinnerpunk wrote:Your opensource suggestion might be a bit fancy for me! Isn't it a Linux thing?

Every program, whether for Linux, Windows or anything else, is created by writing the source code at some point. The resulting program you run is then created by a so called compiler from the source. If the source is then openly given out to the public, we're speaking of an open source program. If not, it's a closed source one (mainly commercial software). The fact that most software for Linux is open source has noting to do with it.


That being said, partimage and dd are indeed Linux programs.

Now please continue on the topic...

I was kinda hoping for an easy step-by-step basic way to replace the hard drive with an intact and bootable copy of the old data.

Somehow, this conversation is getting over-my-head!

I knew this was going to be a new experience for me, but didn't expect so many variables and confusing complications!

I though it would look a bit more like this:
1. Put the new hard drive in an enclosure
2. Install the disk cloning software
3. Plug the new hard drive into the usb port.
4. Go into your software and click "make a bootable copy to the new hard drive"
5. Wait for it to finish
6. Turn off the computer when the copy is finished
7. Physically install the new hard drive
8. restart and you are done

For whatever reason, it's not looking so clear anymore!

BF

v-
I never had that problem before either. Also never used an OEM version or Acronis itself, and all I know is that the menu selections and explanations just didn't make sense--they were in bad YnGlitch, not American English--so I called Seagate to make sure of which one to use. Apparently the Native English Speaker here in the US at Seagate wasn't too experienced either, I just took the one he said really really was a pure clone choice that would leave me with two bootable drives. And it didn't.
I have other backups, my intent was to have the older smaller drive as a hot swap backup that would have my OS and apps, just not the huge data pile on it. I'll get back to that sooner or later, I know there's always a way to fix boot flags and files. I just need to learn the New Vista Way of doing these things.

Bfskinnerpunk wrote:1. Put the new hard drive in an enclosure

I would reverse this and put the target (new) hard drive in the bay, and the source (old) drive in the USB enclosure. Boot from a CD created by Acronis or other tools.

I would also do one step at a time, reboot, and test boot from the new drive. While it may be tempting to clone and expand partition to use the new space in one go, I almost always ran into problems. It is especially true if you are running the IBM's Windows preloads. For some reason, they use */240/63 C/H/S partitioning parameters, instead of the de facto standard */255/63. Some partition tools assumes the latter, and complains or fails when the partitions don't fall on the cylinder boundary. If the partitions are manipulated without the right C/H/S parameters, you may end up with a system that doesn't boot or can't boot into the recovery partition.

I'm new to the forums and I've been using everyone's tips here to upgrade my stock Hitachi Travelstar 100GB to the 7K320 on my T60. So thank you everyone for contributing!

Here are the steps I took:
1) Backed up necessary files / folder in case cloning didn't work.
2) Installed Acronis True Image Home 2009 (DEMO doesn't allow disk cloning from boot CD)
3) Created Boot Disk (CD) for Acronis
4) Turned off computer, removed Old hard drive and placed it into USB SATA 2.5" Enclosure.
5) Installed New Hard Drive into T60. (Guide for installing / remove HD is available in the original T60 user guide).
6) Went into Bios to set SATA as "Compatible mode" - known to disable NCQ.
7) Plugged in USB Drive and Booted machine into Acronis and Cloned in "Automatic Mode". Took 30 mins and voila!

Performance has been very noticeable especially during software installation and virus scanning.

hellosailor wrote:Kelton, Seagate provides an OEM version of Acronis for free, from the Seagate support web site.

Would that be called DiscWizard?

Mike Austin wrote:Would that be called DiscWizard?

Yes.

BTW I just installed a new 7K320 to replace the 80GB 5400 that came with my X61s. Here's my experience...

I used Acronis True Image Home v10, booting from the Acronis recovery CD. The new drive was inside the X61s. The old drive was attached to an Apricorn DriveWire.

Before cloning I formatted the 7K320 under Vista. That took several hours but I figured it would provide a full disk scan to ensure that there were no defects. Then I booted the Acronis CD and did the partitioning, cloning, etc. in a single session.

On reboot using the 7K320 I got a message that winload.exe was missing or corrupt. After a bit of Googling I found How to Avoid or Fix “winload.exe corrupt” in Windows Vista. I downloaded an ISO of the Vista Recovery CD as linked to on that site, burned it and rebooted using it. Sure enough that resolved the problem.

Surely in this day and age it should be a lot easier to clone a new HD, especially for the non-technical user. I was lucky to have a second PC, CD burner, etc. and enough technical skills to Google for a solution but I suspect many people don't.

It actually IS easier to clone a hard drive, but apparently the good folks at Acronis are not native-YnGltich speakers and they chose to get cheap incorrect translations for their product in the OEM versions.

I know many folks haved used their products with perfect results. Others--including myself--have followed the prompts to the letter and not gotten the correct results. And also noticed that the prompts are in YnGlitch (the language of illiterate computer script-readers posing as techs) so no matter what you do, it is a crapshoot.

You'd think SOMEone would notice and could afford to do better, either the OEMs or the vendor. Ain't that hard to hire a high school kid and verify that the translations are correct. Or even (shudder) an adult for one day.

That's pretty funny about Acronis. Their stuff certainly could be written better

I haven't actually had any problems, except with 2009, the one time I tried to do it from the Acronis boot disk, it appeared to work but failed. So I went back to Acronis 11 (last version of 11) and my tried and true method of starting the process right from within Vista, cloning the primary drive to a hard drive in the ultra bay (my main backup method which I try to do every week or so).

Once I complete setting the clone up in Acronis and actually initiate the procedure, Acronis reboots the computer and before vista loads, it automatically boots into some Acronis environment and starts doing the actual cloning. When it finishes, I hit any key to shut down the computer remove my newly cloned drive from the UB and put it away. I have tested them from time to time and they always work great. What's cool is you can still stick those clones in the UB and copy files off the drive, but the first time you install it into the primary drive slot and fire it up, a little Acronis routine will run and rewrite the master boot record so the drive will boot properly from the primary drive position. It's always worked for me (except for that one time from the boot CD with Acronis 2009). I really don't understand all the difficulties people have experienced with this method. . . .

pae77 wrote:I really don't understand all the difficulties people have experienced with this method. . . .

Neither do I. I did this twice over the weekend with True Image Home 2009, once on Vista x86 and once on Vista x64, when upgrading to a new higher capacity 7200 rpm drive on my T400, and shuffling the lower capacity 7200 rpm drive around into a T60.

Cheers,

Bill B.

I’ve used TI for years differently. I either clone or use an image to create a new OS on a new drive. Most of my drives have a C partition of less than 25G, hardly any need be more than 15G in my experience. The rest of the drive usually has 2 partitions, Photos for 1, MPs for another. Other drives for video, the space sucker upper. I use separate drives to back up each drive. The big saver I do is make an image each week of my busy C partitions and store the image on separate drives. This way if I need to go back a month or 2 or whenever it’s there, especially to a fresh install of the OS, say the first month or so. Easy operation once I got it going, tho now I have too many hard drives. Now this is for my desktop which has 5 bays for hard drives but the basic process is used with my T60 also.

I'd recommend Acronis as well. Might have to do the same for myself.

Hi everyone!

I was looking for topics regarding replacing HDDs in T61s and found this particular topic.

Though my T61 is just a year and a half years old, I am soon planning to replace the original 160GB hard drive in it. Given the activity and discussion in this topic, I think it would be better for me to just follow what you guys have been saying here.

I have another question, though. If I replace my old HDD with a new one, will TPM still work with the new HDD? And how about APS? I am under the belief that the hardware for these stuffs are inside the hard drive itself, and replacing the old one with a new one definitely removes these functions in my T61. Or am I wrong in holding that belief?

Also, I am concerned with possible problems that might arise should I replace my old HDD, especially relating to the BIOS. I've read somewhere that the Thinkpad's TPM might be tampered if I replace the old HDD. Should I fear that this might also happen to me? Though my Thinkpad is still under warranty, I plan to do the HDD replacement by myself since I already have a copy of the T61 HMM (and also the Thinkpad service center people might charge me for having my HDD replaced even if I supply them a new one).

Thanks a lot in advance!

Lenono's APS apparently works with an accelerometer in the laptop, and then sends a "lift and park" signal to any hard drive that can take that as an external command. The Seagate drives and others accomplish this internally, sensing and safing themselves without any external aid. So as best I can tell, they are working by themselves AND with APS as a redundant system, or you can disable APS and have one less process running in the computer, and let the drive work by itself.

TPM, dunno. If you are actively using TPM I would guess that your best bet is to disable it, reboot, upgrade the drive and confirm the upgrade is good, then re-enable TPM. That should eliminate any chance of it interfering. But that's an educated guess. Your best bet is to call Lenono Support three times, see if two out of three techs give you the same answer. (Sometimes they've split 2:3 on an issue, or even been wrong 5 times out of six.)

I followed this procedure exactly using TI11, going from the stock 100GB to a 320 on my T60p:

fledster wrote:I'm new to the forums and I've been using everyone's tips here to upgrade my stock Hitachi Travelstar 100GB to the 7K320 on my T60. So thank you everyone for contributing!

Here are the steps I took:
1) Backed up necessary files / folder in case cloning didn't work.
2) Installed Acronis True Image Home 2009 (DEMO doesn't allow disk cloning from boot CD)
3) Created Boot Disk (CD) for Acronis
4) Turned off computer, removed Old hard drive and placed it into USB SATA 2.5" Enclosure.
5) Installed New Hard Drive into T60. (Guide for installing / remove HD is available in the original T60 user guide).
6) Went into Bios to set SATA as "Compatible mode" - known to disable NCQ.
7) Plugged in USB Drive and Booted machine into Acronis and Cloned in "Automatic Mode". Took 30 mins and voila!

Performance has been very noticeable especially during software installation and virus scanning.

URGENT PROBLEM: now, when I boot up, I get the WinVista login screen, put in p-word, and when the circle stops spinning, instead of getting my desktop, the screen goes to black. Cursor is there, movable by mouse or trackpoint, but there's nothing I can do except ctrl-alt-del to get to task manaager, and then shut down.

Can someone PLEASE advise me pronto re. what's knocked out the video and how to fix it.

BTW, my fingerprint login is gone too -- but I'll worry about fixing that after I get the desktop/screen/Start Menu etc. back.

Thanks in advance.

I used to use TI like many others here and up thru TI 8 everything always worked. In my experience, TI became somewhat unreliable with V9.

I then started using Shadow Protect http://www.storagecraft.com/shadow_protect_desktop.php and never had a problem since. I recently upgraded my T61 to a 7K320 WD Scorpio Black from the original 7K160 and everything went without a hitch. If your interested, there has been much discussion about Shadow Protect over at Wilders.

The OEM versions of TrueImage (for Seagate and Apricorn) have both worked for me, but also both failed for me. They didn't clone the old drive to the new one, they copied it AND transferred the ability to boot. The old drive can no longer be booted from, and in one case, Windows says there's no more Windows on it.

This despite exact and repeated tech support from Apricorn and Seagate.

If Acronis doesn't know what "clone" means, or can't pay to get their menu translated correctly, I have to be afraid of them. Maybe you need to speak Greek and use their native-language version for it to work smoothly?

Ed H wrote:I used to use TI like many others here and up thru TI 8 everything always worked. In my experience, TI became somewhat unreliable with V9.

I then started using Shadow Protect http://www.storagecraft.com/shadow_protect_desktop.php and never had a problem since. I recently upgraded my T61 to a 7K320 WD Scorpio Black from the original 7K160 and everything went without a hitch. If your interested, there has been much discussion about Shadow Protect over at Wilders.

Another software to buy?