Thinkpads Forum

My tablet should be here today. I also have my new SATA 7200. I want to clone the entire 5400 drive to the 7200 drive. I have other computers here, but no SATA drive case. I could possibly create a backup image on a network drive on my A31, then change out to the 7200 drive in the X60T, but then how do I get the image from the network drive to the 7200? I have the X6 ultrabase but I didn't get anything to put in the ultraslim bay. I just grabbed the X6 because it was a great sale for $79. figuring I'd get a DVD burner and 2nd HD adapters later on. I did not realize at the time that the sata drive was not pinned out the same. I actually though I could just stick it in my Ultrabay 2000 2nd drive adapter and put the image there.

I also have an external USB2.0 hard drive holder thing. I can put one of my PATA drives in there. I still wouldn't know how to get it back onto the 7200 without a way to boot.

I may also have a working external CDR drive that runs USB2.0. I was never able to get it to work before but I never had USB2.0 until now. This will be my first 2.0 machine. I cannot confirm if that CD drive can be a boot drive. I bought it to try to restore my wife's broken Toshiba (non working CD drive), but never could get it to boot the recovery disc. Again, no USB 2.0 and maybe the drive cannot BOOT. I read somewhere the external CD drive had to be able to boot in order to make that work.

I also have a 512 meg thumbdrive if that helps.


Oh well, I feel stupid now, but perhaps you guys can help me out.

Thanks!

This may be difficult as you get only one chance to create the recovery CDs.

I can see the following options:
1. Create your recovery CDs using the external CD-RW drive and boot from this drive to start factory recovery on the new hard drive. I presume the current ThinkPads support bootup using external USB media.
2. Create a bootable recovery USB drive. 512MB should be enough for the boot rescue media and create the restore CDs using the CD-RW drive. Boot from the USB flash drive and restore the CDs normally.
3. You mentioned you have not bought an Ultrabay drive yet? But do you have another ThinkPad other than the A31? If you do have a T4x or X4x, you can insert it in the bay and it will work like an X60 drive.
4. Lastly, since you live in Florida, there may be willing forum members to loan you a drive or a hard drive bay adapter for a day or two.

I can't comment on the network cloning but I think it would also be possible. It will be more complicated though, as you need to setup a network share, connect to a network drive, create an image, boot with the new hard drive then finally restore the image.

Making the recovery media would probably be the easiest way to clone the drive to a new drive. If that doesn't work because you can't boot from your external CD drive/USB drive ...

A USB floppy + an external harddrive + Ghost 2003 could allow you to clone the drive. Ghost 2003 was the last version that still used DOS to make floppy disks that could create and deploy images (I'm sure it can be bought online for minimal money).
-Install Ghost in Windows.
-Make the floppy disk.
-Boot from the USB floppy.
-Create the image of the current drive, storing it on the external drive.
-Install your new drive.
-Boot from the USB floppy.
-Deploy the image of the old drive onto the new drive.

I am trying to figure out how to boot from the external HD or a USB Thumbdrive. when I made the backup, I was given the option in R&R to make the disc bootable, but now all I get is a missing NTLDR error message.

smvp6459 wrote:Making the recovery media would probably be the easiest way to clone the drive to a new drive. If that doesn't work because you can't boot from your external CD drive/USB drive ...

A USB floppy + an external harddrive + Ghost 2003 could allow you to clone the drive. Ghost 2003 was the last version that still used DOS to make floppy disks that could create and deploy images (I'm sure it can be bought online for minimal money).
-Install Ghost in Windows.
-Make the floppy disk.
-Boot from the USB floppy.
-Create the image of the current drive, storing it on the external drive.
-Install your new drive.
-Boot from the USB floppy.
-Deploy the image of the old drive onto the new drive.

No USB floppy
No money

How does one get a tablet and not have money to spare?

Well, I own a X60 with a 5400 RPM sata drive, bought a 7200 RPM sata drive, no X6. How I did it was

a) I bought a external 2.5" drive container that has SATA connectors,
b) put my 7200 inside,
c) clone it using acronis true image.
d) swap the drives
e) Boot up and viola

For your situation, I would suggest download the free 15 days trial of acronis home 10 here http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/do ... trueimage/

What you need to REMEMBER to do, never destroy anything in your 5400rpm drives untill everything is working as you like it.

a) copy all your data from your spare HDD in the 2.5" external into your tablet 5400 drive. Because during the cloning process, everything is gone in this drive.
b) download the free trial, it will be fully funcational for your need
c) clone your tablet drive
d) swap the empty 7200 drive into your tablet and put the original 5400 aside
e) Press start and press F1 to enter bios
f) change bios to boot from USB
g) set the order of the boot devices to the detected USB drive, then the HDD in the tablet
h) restart your tablet and if you can boot from the USB drive, you are in buisness!!
i) clone the content back from the exernal 2.5" drive into the 7200 rpm drive
j) restart, go into bios to change the boot order
k) if it boots into the 7200 rpm drive, say 'thank you' B-)
l) reboot again and press the blue thinkvantage button to ensure that the hidden partion (ie recovery) is still alive. This will also ensure that you can create recovery discs later on

Hmmm, what are you going to do with the 5400rpm sata drive? (note! your warranty could be void for using non lenovo 7200rpm drive, so check your warranty wordings)

Ideasmiths wrote:Well, I own a X60 with a 5400 RPM sata drive, bought a 7200 RPM sata drive, no X6. How I did it was

a) I bought a external 2.5" drive container that has SATA connectors,
b) put my 7200 inside,
c) clone it using acronis true image.
d) swap the drives
e) Boot up and viola

For your situation, I would suggest download the free 15 days trial of acronis home 10 here http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/do ... trueimage/

What you need to REMEMBER to do, never destroy anything in your 5400rpm drives untill everything is working as you like it.

a) copy all your data from your spare HDD in the 2.5" external into your tablet 5400 drive. Because during the cloning process, everything is gone in this drive.
b) download the free trial, it will be fully funcational for your need
c) clone your tablet drive
d) swap the empty 7200 drive into your tablet and put the original 5400 aside
e) Press start and press F1 to enter bios
f) change bios to boot from USB
g) set the order of the boot devices to the detected USB drive, then the HDD in the tablet
h) restart your tablet and if you can boot from the USB drive, you are in buisness!!
i) clone the content back from the exernal 2.5" drive into the 7200 rpm drive
j) restart, go into bios to change the boot order
k) if it boots into the 7200 rpm drive, say 'thank you' B-)
l) reboot again and press the blue thinkvantage button to ensure that the hidden partion (ie recovery) is still alive. This will also ensure that you can create recovery discs later on

Hmmm, what are you going to do with the 5400rpm sata drive? (note! your warranty could be void for using non lenovo 7200rpm drive, so check your warranty wordings)

ok, I'll try this!
what I tried was similar but with R+R instead of true image.

I'm going to buy the 2nd HD SAT-A adaptor when the price drops. $50 is just a rip off.

To the other poster-I needed a tablet for work. Had some money before I bought it! LOL Seriously, I'm buying it on TIME. The American way. No interest charges.

I tried Acronis- made a Full backup to the USB HD. Tried to boot said Boot mgr missing. So back to square one.

I'm not sure if Acronis is similar to Ghost, but in Ghost you have to select a option to put the boot sector information on the image.

well I just can't figure it out.
The start up recovery manager part of Acronis says the USB drive isn't bootable by this computer.

proaudioguy wrote: I'm going to buy the 2nd HD SAT-A adaptor when the price drops. $50 is just a rip off.

To the other poster-I needed a tablet for work. Had some money before I bought it! LOL Seriously, I'm buying it on TIME. The American way. No interest charges.

My fault, forgot that the boot sector by IBM may be replaced by Acronis....

with regards to the SATA adaptor, lol I bought my external 2.5" container with SATA connector at the back for only SGD 20, which work out to be USD 13. You ARE getting rip off.

Hmmm, what other devices you have?

Ideasmiths wrote:

proaudioguy wrote: I'm going to buy the 2nd HD SAT-A adaptor when the price drops. $50 is just a rip off.

To the other poster-I needed a tablet for work. Had some money before I bought it! LOL Seriously, I'm buying it on TIME. The American way. No interest charges.

My fault, forgot that the boot sector by IBM may be replaced by Acronis....

with regards to the SATA adaptor, lol I bought my external 2.5" container with SATA connector at the back for only SGD 20, which work out to be USD 13. You ARE getting rip off.

Hmmm, what other devices you have?

I have an A31 networked.

Can you use an external USB CD drive, external USB hard drive as your temporary image bin and a BartPE CD with a ghost32.exe binary on it? Boot the machine with the BartPE CD, invoke ghost32.exe and use the USB hard drive as the target for the image file or even if the hard drive is a SATA - a direct image of the source hard drive.

I have used a similar setup to make backup images of Windows XP Pro with the R&R partition intact in the image and also clean installs of Vista Ultimate on a T60, T42 and a T41. I understand that the T60 had an internal optical drive but in theory this should also work. In a day or two I will attempt the same on my X60 tablet and report.

MiniPe.

You can boot it from an USB stick, and there is Acronis true Image in it.
You can backup to a network share.

All you need is the minipe.iso (you can find it on the net), and flashboot (for transferring the iso to USB stick).

If the minipe not detect your network card, you only have to copy the needed files to drivers, inf, system32 directories.

pdudas wrote:MiniPe.

You can boot it from an USB stick, and there is Acronis true Image in it.
You can backup to a network share.

All you need is the minipe.iso (you can find it on the net), and flashboot (for transferring the iso to USB stick).

If the minipe not detect your network card, you only have to copy the needed files to drivers, inf, system32 directories.

Is there a tutorial online somewhere? This seems like a great option.

There is no tutorial.

Minipe is a windows XP running from CD.