Easy way to departition hard drive?

[si_blakely]

Laptop harddrives are easy to replace - just make sure you get the right sort of drive (ie don’t buy a SATA drive to replace an PATA one).

The hard drive is often tucked behind the battery - remove the battery and there is a tag to pull out the hard drive. It may have a carrier and interface adapter - these can easily be transferred to the new drive.

Si

[Sophistry_and_Illusion]

@yoyodyne

If you want more space than deleting your D: will get you, I’d get a new large drive and a copy of Acronis True Image (there’s a downloadable version too). You can create a bootable True Image CD, boot to it, and create an image file of C: to the external drive (like a big .zip file). Then change out the internal drive and restore the image back to the new drive.

True Image can then be used a a good backup program in the future.

I decided to get a bigger hard drive. I dropped by Geek Squad to see if they could do the actual labor, but they said (1) they can’t copy the actual non-free programs (Windows, MS Word, Norton Antivirus); and (2) they wanted to charge me $350 for the entire procedure.

They did look up the product keys or license keys or whatever the hell they are for MS Office and Norton, so maybe MS and Norton will let me download new copies since I already bought the licenses (my computer came without software disks).

But it sounds like what you are suggesting would actually copy all of my purchased/copyrighted software and I wouldn’t have to go through the agony of begging Microsoft to give me, free, a new copy of MS Word and Windows XP, etc. Is that right? I have a big-ass external drive, so creating an image of my C: and D: drives is no problem. I’m just worried about the licensed software, since the Geek Squad people told me that can’t be copied.

[si_blakely]

@Sophistry and Illusion

I decided to get a bigger hard drive. I dropped by Geek Squad to see if they could do the actual labor, but they said (1) they can’t copy the actual non-free programs (Windows, MS Word, Norton Antivirus); and (2) they wanted to charge me $350 for the entire procedure.

They did look up the product keys or license keys or whatever the hell they are for MS Office and Norton, so maybe MS and Norton will let me download new copies since I already bought the licenses (my computer came without software disks).

But it sounds like what you are suggesting would actually copy all of my purchased/copyrighted software and I wouldn’t have to go through the agony of begging Microsoft to give me, free, a new copy of MS Word and Windows XP, etc. Is that right? I have a big-ass external drive, so creating an image of my C: and D: drives is no problem. I’m just worried about the licensed software, since the Geek Squad people told me that can’t be copied.

The Geek squad are wrong in this case (plus the price is way over the top). Cloning your current disk to a bigger disk will be fine - the MS license validation will not trigger on a single change (like swapping a hard disk). Using Acronis TrueImage or Ghost or a similar disk cloning tool will do the job better than anything else.

That said, you will need to take it in steps - clone and resize the C: drive first, leaving enough space for the recovery data partition, then do the D: drive second.

look at this for the Trinity Rescue Kit, which includes cloning tools. Or get BartPE with the DriveImage XML plugin (you may have trouble with this if you do not have an XP install disc.

Si

[Sophistry_and_Illusion]

@si_blakely

The Geek squad are wrong in this case (plus the price is way over the top). Cloning your current disk to a bigger disk will be fine - the MS license validation will not trigger on a single change (like swapping a hard disk). Using Acronis TrueImage or Ghost or a similar disk cloning tool will do the job better than anything else.

That said, you will need to take it in steps - clone and resize the C: drive first, leaving enough space for the recovery data partition, then do the D: drive second.

look at this for the Trinity Rescue Kit, which includes cloning tools. Or get BartPE with the DriveImage XML plugin (you may have trouble with this if you do not have an XP install disc.

Si

This is very good news. Do you know somewhere on the web where there are Instructions for Copying and Replacing Hard Drives for Submoronic Chimpanzees? 'Cuz that’s more or less what I’m going to need.

[Sophistry_and_Illusion]

@Sophistry and Illusion

This is very good news. Do you know somewhere on the web where there are Instructions for Copying and Replacing Hard Drives for Submoronic Chimpanzees? 'Cuz that’s more or less what I’m going to need.

Actually, I found this instructional video on the Best Buy site. It gives instructions for cloning the old hard drive right onto the new one, without having to create a disk image, or a boot disk, or anything. That looks like about the level of difficulty I can handle. I just need to order some cloning software–I’ll order the kind they used in the video, because I know from the video that the process is easy with that software. The software was EZ Upgrade Notebook Hard Drive Upgrade Kit.

[Dewey_Finn]

You should check the manufacturer’s website as it may have instructions for replacing the hard drive. (I know that the Dell website has such instructions, but I don’t know about the HP/Compaq site.)

[Sophistry_and_Illusion]

@Dewey Finn

You should check the manufacturer’s website as it may have instructions for replacing the hard drive. (I know that the Dell website has such instructions, but I don’t know about the HP/Compaq site.)

I should probably do that, because even if I can copy the old hard drive to the new one, I don’t have the instruction manual for the computer and so would kind of be fumbling in the dark replacing the actual hardware. I know, this is supposed to be easy for anyone with two neurons to rub together; but my wife will kill me if I break our laptop, so I want to be extra careful and make sure I know what I’m doing.

[HMS_Irruncible]

@control-z

The much simpler route would be to get a second hard drive. You should be able to get iTunes to use that drive. Reinstalling Windows is not for the faint of heart.

I agree, but with the suggestion that the second hard drive be a large-capacity iPod. Then you can carry your media around and watch, listen, read it on any other computer that has iTunes.