Upgrading hard drive help!

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susie

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Help required please for non technical person (me)!!

My lappy is running out of memory so I am going to upgrade the hard disk (and the other little bit it uses for processing) so that it a) speeds up and b) lets me put more pics on it!

I know where the hard drive and memory thingy goes, and I have downloaded a program to copy the whole of my current hard drive to the new one so that bit is easy peasy (ish). The general idea is to copy the current drive to the new one, remove current drive and insert new one, if new one works breath a sigh of relief if not put old one back and have a tantrum :lol: My logic says that by doing it that way I am not going to totally mess up the lappy.

What I don't know is do I have to format the new drive first or will that happen automatically, and is there anything else I need to do so I don't make a complete hash of it!

Thanks
 
Hmm - why not just buy an external hard drive? far less hassle also I'm sure you cant just "lift" windows from the old hard disk onto the new one, so you would have to install windows again on your computer then copy all your data over.. whilst an external is just a big removable disk.

Whats your current RAM memory? (not hard disk memory)

Regards, James
 
External hard drive user too.
Upload pics to pc, put them on the external and on to a disc then delete from pc. :)
 
Thanks, its not just the pics that are bogging it down, I have quite a bit of other stuff on there as well that are not storable hence the upgrade, its that or a new laptop and I'd rather try the upgrade as my pennies are saved for a lens :lol: I think the current hard drive is 80 :thinking:
 
Susie. You can also run programs off of an external hard drive, You just direct installers to the drive and let them install there. USB 2.0 which is what most computers/laptops use now can transfer data at anything up to 480MB per second so you wont notice a drop in speed between using a normal hard drive and an external.

This is what I would thoroughly reccomend. It is far more hastle having to put in a new hard drive, get the PC to recognise the drive, install windows, download drivers for everything, going through all the installers for external stuff e.g. cameras/removable disks compared to buying an external, plugging it in and your done. Another thing, External hard drives no longer break the bank! I picked up a 500 gig external a couple weeks ago for £60 whilst a built in one would cost roughly the same price.

Regards, James
 
Jamesbuk said:
Susie. You can also run programs off of an external hard drive, You just direct installers to the drive and let them install there. USB 2.0 which is what most computers/laptops use now can transfer data at anything up to 480MB per second so you wont notice a drop in speed between using a normal hard drive and an external.

This is what I would thoroughly reccomend. It is far more hastle having to put in a new hard drive, get the PC to recognise the drive, install windows, download drivers for everything, going through all the installers for external stuff e.g. cameras/removable disks compared to buying an external, plugging it in and your done. Another thing, External hard drives no longer break the bank! I picked up a 500 gig external a couple weeks ago for £60 whilst a built in one would cost roughly the same price.

Regards, James
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Hmm, looks like it will have to wait and I will just have to keep my fingers crossed it does not run out totally then. I'm not that good with things like changing where things are on the drive, and the install disks are packed up somewhere in a load of boxes as I am moving soon and I didn't think I would be needing them :bang:

Fingers and toes crossed time!

Thanks a lot though, I will try it when I get sorted out.
 
There's plenty of tools available to let you clone your drive - with it being a laptop, you'd need a USB caddy to clone the new drive in anyway (Once the clone is done, and you're happy, put your old drive in the USB caddy, and have another external drive!)

You won't have to reinstall anything, as it is an exact copy of your old drive...
 
That sounds like my theory!

I downloaded this a couple of nights ago and had hoped that would do the job, I was not sure if the new drive would need formatting or anything first though - from what you have said its just copy across and its done.

I have got a caddy and a couple of hard drives so perhaps I will try it tonight :)

Thanks a lot, if this works I think I should be able to uninstall all the programs on the old drive and have masses of space so that I can use it as backup storage for the pictures! All for the huge total price of £35 :thumbs:
 
Thanks, I will try it tonight with a bit of luck by tomorrow night I will have a much improved lappy!
 
Acronis is my favourite for that sort of job :)
 
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