Cloning set-up?

[tenpointnine]

Knowing very little about computers, other than that T60s are great (just bought another for my granddaughter), I need advice on updating hard drive on my T60 1952 CTO, 3Gb RAM, 100 Gb HDD.

I have a Scorpio Blue 250 Gb HDD on its way to me, and also an Ultrabay Slim SATA adaptor. Advanced dock arrived yesterday.(How did we used to manage without ebay?)

Anyway, am I right in assuming that I can fit new drive into the Ultrabay to clone from old to new? I have watched lots of Youtube videos about cloning the hard drive, but there are lots of different software programs, many of which are free.

Are these free ones any good? I would be quite happy to buy this disk, or something similar, but if there is a good free solution...-

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/220846087653? ... 1438.l2649

Any advice would be appreciated.

Walter

[EOMtp]

... fit new drive into the Ultrabay to clone from old to new?

No -- reverse the locations. Move the old drive to the Ultrabay, and place the new drive in the primary drive bay. Then clone from old to new.

Note: Depending on the cloning package you use, the MBR (Master Boot Record) may not transfer correctly, and you may need to reconstruct it after the cloning operation, lest the new cloned drive will not boot. The indication will be that there is a blank flashing cursor at the top of the screen, and nothing else. We'll deal with that eventuality later, if necessary ...

If you have a USB flash drive, the easiest thing is to make the flash drive bootable with the HP tool (link below), place the cloning software on it, and then boot from the flash drive (press F12 at bootup) to run the cloning software.
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/Te ... ITY-I23839

Good luck!

[tenpointnine]

Thanks. I should have the new drive and the ultrabay caddy in a few days, then fingers crossed!

[Johan]

My suggestion:

Download the free Acronis True Image WD Edition Software and either make a bootable CD-ROM, run it from an USB-CD drive, or install it in on the "old" HDD, then move the old HDD to the UltraBay. Mount the new (formatted) HDD in the main HDD bay, boot up on the old-UltraBay-HDD, and clone from the old UltraBay HDD to the new internal HDD. Once the cloning process is complete, shut down power, remove the old HDD, boot on the new HDD, voilà!

PS: If you don't want the cloning program to be on the new HDD, then make a (Windows) System Restore point (on the old HDD) before installing the cloning software on the old HDD. Once the cloning to the new HDD is complete, and when you have booted up using the new HDD, then (on the new HDD) simply use the (Windows) System Restore to restore the (new) HDD to the restore point created just before installing the cloning SW. By doing this, you will effectively uninstall the cloning program from the new HDD!

Johan

[tenpointnine]

I tried to download Acronis, but when asked to 'Run', I got a warning message that said I needed a WD product in my system (or something to that effect), in order to be able to download the program. ???
Will this work if, (when they arrive) I put the new WD Scorpio Blue in the main HDD bay and my old drive in the ultrabay, and boot up from the old drive? Will it recognise that there is a WD drive in there somewhere?
You can obviously tell I know very little about computers!

[Johan]

@ tenpointnine:

I certainly appreciate your gratefulness for the help I provided you - my pleasure serving you!

If you take a look in the manual (also found at the link I provided), you will read the following:

1.3 System requirements and supported media

The hardware requirements of Acronis True Image WD Edition correspond to the minimum requirements for the operating system installed on the computer to be used for running Acronis True Image WD Edition. In addition Acronis True Image WD Edition requires the following hardware:

- Attached Western Digital device
- CD-RW/DVD-RW drive for bootable media creation
- Mouse or other pointing device (recommended).

.. and later:

2.1 Installing Acronis True Image WD Edition
To install the program, you need at least one Western Digital hard drive to be attached.

Johan

[EOMtp]

tenpointnine: Read the PM (Private Message) that I sent you.

[cadillacmike68]

If you put the original drive in the ultrabay and then clone it to the new disk in the internal bay, when the system reboots, won't this mess the boot.ini on your original drive? I would want my original drive as a backup / recovery start point, since I've had issues with disks not booting, etc in the past.

[tenpointnine]

I am a total novice where hardware is concerned, hence my original post, but as Johan stated, "Once the cloning process is complete, shut down power, remove the old HDD, boot on the new HDD". I assume that if the old hdd is removed before booting up again, then there won't be a problem?

[cadillacmike68]

I am a total novice where hardware is concerned, hence my original post, but as Johan stated, "Once the cloning process is complete, shut down power, remove the old HDD, boot on the new HDD". I assume that if the old hdd is removed before booting up again, then there won't be a problem?

Theoretically, yes, however in practice when i use Acronis disk director (not true image - because true image cannot clone from a bigger to a smaller drive) it always reboots the system on me - usually when i'm sleeping because this can take hours to clone on a bigger disk and I'm not going to stare at a screen.

When it re-boots winblows messes up the MBR! so i have to fix it.

What i have not tried is using creating and using a bootable CD to boot from. But doing that takes up the ultrabay, which is where the 2nd (or original as you guy seem to like) HDD.

I don't have a USB HDD enclosure - never needed one with the T series ultrabay so I can't boot a CD in any event. I think the big T20 T30 series dock (don't remember the FRU or actual IBM name for it) has another IDE controller and Ultrabay slot, but i don't have one of those either. And since i don't know for certain that booting the CD will prevent the auto re-boot, i'm not really interested in finding one.

Thus i have to put up with fixing the MBR (easy) and overcoming any HAL.DLL errors - sometimes not so easy).

If the machine is going to re-boot and mess up an MBR, i'd prefer that it mess up the new clone, NOT my original HDD.

[cadillacmike68]

Can we talk about the MBR now??

I used acronis True Image 11 (retail box) to clone a 320GB onto another 320GB. The cloned disk will not boot - i get the blinking cursor at top left.

Booting with an XP Boot Floppy works, it takes a while longer but the whole OS boots.

I have tried re-writing the MBR with a win98 startup disk FDISK /MBR - no help. I aso tried the IBM T30 recovery partition restore diskette (the main function of this is to write IBMs original MBR) but that doesn't help either.

I thought that cloning using True Image was supposed to alleviate the need for this stuff?????

Thee are no boot.ini or hal.dll errors - those will stop the boot process cold - even with a boot floppy - been there.

So how do i get cloned disk this to boot?

(another poster wrote: ... fit new drive into the Ultrabay to clone from old to new?

No -- reverse the locations. Move the old drive to the Ultrabay, and place the new drive in the primary drive bay. Then clone from old to new.

Note: Depending on the cloning package you use, the MBR (Master Boot Record) may not transfer correctly, and you may need to reconstruct it after the cloning operation, lest the new cloned drive will not boot. The indication will be that there is a blank flashing cursor at the top of the screen, and nothing else. We'll deal with that eventuality later, if necessary ...

If you have a USB flash drive, the easiest thing is to make the flash drive bootable with the HP tool (link below), place the cloning software on it, and then boot from the flash drive (press F12 at bootup) to run the cloning software.
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/Te ... ITY-I23839

Good luck!

[Johan]

@ cadillacmike68:

First, please inform specificly where you had the old (source) drive mounted during cloning (e.g. in the internal T60 HDD bay?), and where you had the new (target) drive mounted during cloning (e.g. in the UltraBay)?

If you haven't had your problem solved yet, then I suggest that you very carefully follow the suggestions in this post - notice the "from-outside-HDD-to-inside-HDD cloning direction". This method has proven successful for me (and many others).

Johan

[taichi]

Having struggled with the cloning question on my T60P, I'm curious what anyone thinks of something like the Clickfree C6. It does an incremental image of more than one computer, and the image can be used to restore the whole system and data. More than that, one can apparently boot the computer from the C6 image!

Sounds great to me!

Any thoughts?

[taichi]

No takers on the Clickfree question?

I realize that imaging is not cloning, but as a backup solution (given the Thinkpad's oddities) it sounds like a better solution.

The tech at the company said that if the Thinkpad can take a Windows repair disk and use it through the optical drive, then the Clickfree image restore should work, as the MBR is not utlized for it's operation.

Any thoughts? Anyone? Anyone out there? Help!

[robert213]

No takers on the Clickfree question?

Most of us here are fans of Acronis True Image Home versions 9, 10 and 11...

[cadillacmike68]

@ cadillacmike68:

First, please inform specificly where you had the old (source) drive mounted during cloning (e.g. in the internal T60 HDD bay?), and where you had the new (target) drive mounted during cloning (e.g. in the UltraBay)?

If you haven't had your problem solved yet, then I suggest that you very carefully follow the suggestions in this post - notice the "from-outside-HDD-to-inside-HDD cloning direction". This method has proven successful for me (and many others).

Johan

Johan,

I booted the original HDD in the main bay and had the target HDD in the ultrabay.

This situation hase been overcome by events, or OBE as we like to call it in the army. I attribute my initial problem either to not having the supervisor HDD passwords in effect during the clone - fixed by removing all PWs temporarily while cloning, or by not properly "cleaning" the target drive, or by trying to clone to a completely identical drive thus confusing winblows too much.

I have had 100% cloning success since then by 1: making sure all PWs are OFF the targer drive, 2 starting with a working drive or a DISKPART Clean / initialize routine first and, 3 not cloning to an identical HDD.

It DOES NOT MATTER which drive is where in the internal thinkpad bays. I like to keep the original in the main bay and the target in the ultrabay. but i have done "reverse" clones too. I also did original in a USB, target in the main bay and booted off the acronis CD. The interactive part is smoother this way - no reboots - but the USB 1.1 is painfully slow - took 15 HOURS to clone.

My now preferred method is booting the acronis CD from the ultrabay using the original Thinkpad T series dock I (will work with some A and R series). The source HDD in main bay and target HDD in ultrabay - when i have my dock with me. Otherwise I boot the original HDD in the main bay and clone to the target HDD in the ultrabay with no CD. Proper prep and not having the wrong PW is key.

No issues since that one time.

This is all using Acronis True Image 11. Note i have never used the backup function - i prefer to COPY my files to a dedicated formatted separate HDD and have found a utility that will add / freshen and even delete (if i deleted from my main drive) to any drive.