[Solved] Upgrading HDD without optical drive

[quinndexter]

Hi all,

I've read lots of topics related to my questions, but I couldn't find (or didn't understand ) answers.

I own a X31 with a 30GB hard drive. I want to upgrade the HDD, so I bought a Momentus 5400.3 160GB.

Knowing that I don't have an optical drive, how can I clone my actual OS to the new HD, so that later I can switch the HDs and boot on the new one ?
I have a USB caddy ready.

I've read a lot about cloning softwares, the one seeming to work well is Acronis, but it involves at some point the use of a boot cd.


Did anybody successfully upgraded his X31 HDD without an optical drive ?
(I must say that I don't want to get the IBM hidden partitions on the new HD).


Thanks for your input.

Jo

[virge]

You're going to need some way of connecting the new drive to the X31 to do the cloning. I've used USB-HDD adapters with Acronis and for the most part that works fine.

If you don't already have one, you might find it useful to purchase one for the cloning. After you are done you can put the 30gb drive in there and use it as external storage.

There's no need for an optical drive.

[quinndexter]

I have this device.

So you say that Acronis doesn't need the use of a boot cd ?
Let's call C: the drive in my laptop today (old drive) and D: the drive connected via USB (new drive).
I can easily clone C into D, and then D will be perfectly bootable when I decide to put it in the laptop ?

[quinndexter]

All the tutorials I read on Acronis said to do as follow :

Put the new blank disk in laptop
Put the old disk in USB enclosure

Start the computer and boot on a Acronis CD
Follow the instructions to clone


I don't have an optical drive, so this method can't work for me.

Is there another way ?

[K0LO]

quinndexter:

The Acronis program allows you to create either a bootable CD or a bootable USB flash drive. In your case you could boot your X31 from a flash drive.

One of the Acronis True Image forum regulars has also created a tutorial for making an external USB hard drive bootable so that is another alternative.

[quinndexter]

Ok I see.

My hdd enclosure uses 2 usb ports and x31 has only 2 ports.... If I find a usb port replicator I should be able to do my cloning right ?

Or is there a bios conflict if 2 devices are connected during the boot ?

Thanks very much

[K0LO]

The port replicator might work but you'll have to try to find out.

Most external USB hdds only need two ports if the current available from one port is insufficient to power the drive. Any chance that your hdd enclosure came with an external power supply and can you run it on external power temporarily? Have you tried the external with only one USB port connected? I would think that a 2.5" laptop hdd would run OK from a single 5 V, 500 mA USB port. Can you try to see? Maybe the second port is only needed for powering a 3.5" desktop hdd.

Also, the Acronis TrueImage recovery version is RAM resident, so after it boots the flash drive can be removed. So another experiment that you could try is to boot from the flash drive with only one HDD port connected to USB. After True Image is RAM resident, unplug the flash drive and plug in the second hdd USB connector. The external USB disk must be present when the Acronis recovery program loads so that it is discovered.

I can't be positive that this will work but there is one way to find out!

[virge]

I have this device.

So you say that Acronis doesn't need the use of a boot cd ?
Let's call C: the drive in my laptop today (old drive) and D: the drive connected via USB (new drive).
I can easily clone C into D, and then D will be perfectly bootable when I decide to put it in the laptop ?

I've done it a few times using Acronis. I don't remember what version I have as this current computer is running Linux Mint and has never had Acronis loaded.

In my version, I boot to XP. Open up Acronis, select "Clone Drive" from the menu, make sure the new drive is plugged in via USB, then let it run. After its done, I pull the old drive out of the laptop, and put the USB connected drive in. Works fine. No CD, no USB flash drive required. Maybe you have a different version of Acronis.

[K0LO]

Virge:

The method you describe (cloning an internal drive to an external USB drive) will work with PCs that use the standard 255-head BIOS geometry for hard disks. However, most (all?) ThinkPads use a 240-head BIOS geometry. To clone successfully the destination disk must be installed internally so that the BIOS sees the disk with the correct geometry.

A lot of Compaq machines also use the 240-head geometry so the same advice applies. Most other PCs use 255-head BIOS geometry so for them it doesn't matter if the destination disk is internal or external.

[quinndexter]

Very interesting, and very time saving because I was going to try virge's method.

I've been trying to investigate on my problem today.
First, you were right k0lo, the hdd usb enclosure works perfectly with only one wire plugged in. One problem is solved, I have 2 usb ports and I need only 2, so everything is fine.
Then I worked at making an Acronis bootable usb flash drive. First I had to update my X31 bios, and also the embedded controler. It can now boot on a usb device when I press F12 on startup.
Unfortunately my acronis bootable usb flash drive is not ready yet, problems never stop occuring...

Thanks for your help, I will post the end of the story if I can make everything work.

[virge]

Virge:

The method you describe (cloning an internal drive to an external USB drive) will work with PCs that use the standard 255-head BIOS geometry for hard disks. However, most (all?) ThinkPads use a 240-head BIOS geometry. To clone successfully the destination disk must be installed internally so that the BIOS sees the disk with the correct geometry.

A lot of Compaq machines also use the 240-head geometry so the same advice applies. Most other PCs use 255-head BIOS geometry so for them it doesn't matter if the destination disk is internal or external.

Thats news to me. I don't quite understand the technical issues, but in real life, I have been successful using this method on my Thinkpads. Just recently I upgraded my X23/24 drive to a Hitachi 7200rpm and cloned it with no problems using an external usb enclosure. I can't recall precisely which other machines, but I know I've run it on at least two of my other Thinkpads. I think it was an A31 and a T42. Maybe I was just lucky I had compatible machines?

[exTPfan]

Using Acronis, I've cloned numerous drives with the new drive in a USB enclosure or in the secondary bay (600e, 600x, T23, T42, T61).
Perhaps I've been lucky, but I've never had any problems (under XP) --- just swapped the drives and booted from the new drive.

[quinndexter]

I give you a confirmation. It worked flawlessly.

Windows XP Pro
Acronis True Image Home 2009
Thinkpad X31 2672-3UU
New drive Momentus 5400.3

I ran TI2009 with the new drive in usb enclosure.
The computer shut down, then reboot in some safe mode and performs the Acronis cloning.
Took 30 minutes to clone 25GB.
The computer rebooted at the end of the cloning. Unfortunately my boot sequence was set to boot first on usb, so the computer tried to boot on the usb enclosure, which failed. I shut it down, switched the drives, and then powered it up.
I saw WinXP logo, and I was so happy.

Thanks all.
I now have a nice 160GB 5400rpm drive, applications are launching way faster.

[virge]

Took 30 minutes to clone 25GB.

Congrats on the successful transition to that fat new drive. My X24 cloning took about 3 hours using USB 1.1!