Report on using EZ Gig II to upgrade T40 hard drive

[edbatista]

The bottom line: EZ Gig II worked perfectly, but don't boot and run the software from the CD, or the cloned drive won't work. Boot normally from your old drive, install EZ Gig II, and then run the software from within Windows.

The details:My T40's 40GB hard drive was getting dangerously full, so I decided to upgrade to a larger drive.

I bought a 100GB 5400rpm Toshiba drive from a local shop for $140, and bought the EZ Gig II Hard Drive Upgrade kit by Apricorn from BiX Computers online for $70 (including 2nd day air shipping).

The upgrade kit included an enclosure for the new hard drive, USB data and power cables, and a CD with the EZ Gig II software.

According to Apricorn's documentation, booting and running EZ Gig II directly from the CD "will enable faster copies and ensure no interruptions," so that's what I did. (Note: Don't do this.)

The (first) cloning operation took about 30 minutes and was apparently successful--all of the files from my old drive were visible on the new drive.

However, when I removed the new drive from the enclosure and swapped it into the laptop, it wouldn't boot up. I got the initial IBM splashscreen (suggesting that the new drive was inserted properly), and then a black screen with a blinking white cursor in the upper left corner (suggesting that there was another problem.)

I called Apricorn's support number, reached a live person right away and described the situation. Noting that this was a common issue with IBM T-series, he informed me that I had to go into BIOS setup, enter the Security settings, and disable the Pre-Desktop Area. Then I had to repeat the cloning operation.

I don't fully understand the technical details, but it appears that there are some hidden elements on the old drive that are protected when the Pre-Desktop Area is enabled. These hidden elements apparently must be installed in order to boot from a drive, but they weren't copied during the initial cloning operation--hence, the new drive wouldn't boot.

I asked this board whether it was really safe to follow Apricorn's advice and disable the Pre-Desktop Area and got some helpful, but cautionary, advice, the upshot of which was: it's probably OK if all you're going to do is clone the drive, but not necessarily, and if you're doing anything else, you may overwrite some important data.

So before taking that step, I decided to try the cloning operation again, but this time from within Windows. I re-installed the old drive in the laptop and the new drive in the enclosure, booted up from the old drive, and ran EZ Gig II from within Windows. The cloning operation again took about 30 minutes.

Then I put the new drive into the laptop--it booted successfully and appears to be working fine. Going from 10% free space to 67% free space is a good feeling.