laptop hard drive upgrade ?????

XWrench3

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i bought a used Dell precision M90 a few months back, and find myself using at least as much as i do my desktop now. but the laptop only has a 40gb hard drive in it. which leaves next to nothing available for anything but the basics that are already there. it is running windows 7 for the o.s.. it looks to me that the hard drive slips out of the right side of the machine, and if that is true, it looks like a breeze to change out. however, i do have a question about setting a new hard drive up. this computer did not come with a system restore cd. and even if it did, the original o.s. was windows xp. is there a way i can copy the o.s. to another drive, then down load it to the new hard drive? or will i have to go out and buy a copy of Windows 7 at a store some place? i know the laptop has some kind of a cd or dvd drive in it. but to be honest, i have not even tried it to see if it works. if it is a dvd burner, maybe i can create restore dvd??? would that work?
 
Clonezilla to clone the drive (I recommend cloning to an image to an external drive, and then restore the image from the external onto the new drive.

After that, unplug the old drive, boot off of the new drive. Once you verify everything works like it did before, then you can use GParted to partition/format the old drive.
 
After that, unplug the old drive, boot off of the new drive. Once you verify everything works like it did before, then you can use GParted to partition/format the old drive.
well, i understand cloning the old drive to an external hard drive. which i have. and i understand sending that information to the new hard drive (i have never done this before, but it makes sense). but i do not understand the { then you can use GParted to partition/format the old drive.} part. why would i do anything to the old drive that i took out? or even how would i if it is out of the machine.
 
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well, i understand cloning the old drive to an external hard drive. which i have. and i understand sending that information to the new hard drive (i have never done this before, but it makes sense). but i do not understand the { then you can use GParted to partition/format the old drive.} part. why would i do anything to the old drive that i took out? or even how would i if it is out of the machine.

Only have to do the 2nd part if you want to use the old drive as a secondary/data drive for something.

Also, may be a good idea to get the key for your Windows install in case you would just like to do a clean install. Use something like Belarc Advisor, MagicJellyBean Keyfinder or WinKeyFinder:

Belarc Advisor - Free Personal PC Audit, for software, hardware and security configuration information on your computer. Software license management, IT asset management, cyber security audits, and more.
KeyFinder | Magical Jelly Bean (free version is fine to use)
KeyFinder | Magical Jelly Bean

May even be a good idea to run all of them to see if they all come up with the same key.
 
To clear up the confusion on my part. I meant:

After cloning the old drive to the new one (assuming it's going to much bigger) you are going to have extra drive space. Some cloning programs don't always format the extra space to make it usable. So I suggested the partition program to make the extra space on your new drive usable as storage.
 
To clear up the confusion on my part. I meant:

After cloning the old drive to the new one (assuming it's going to much bigger) you are going to have extra drive space. Some cloning programs don't always format the extra space to make it usable. So I suggested the partition program to make the extra space on your new drive usable as storage.

Ah, good call.

Yes, GParted can be used to do this, to resize the cloned partition and make it larger to encompass the rest of the unused space on the drive.
 
man, i have got to love all the help you guys give on this board! with help, you can teach on old dog some new tricks.
 
ok, so i was looking at hard drives tonight. how do i tell exactly which one i need? there is a lot more to it than picking how many GB i want. i had all the numbers on this hard drive written down, but the paper is MIA when i need it. i thought about trying to remove the drive while the computer was running. so i could directly type the numbers in off the drive. but i do not know if that would fry something or not. so i will post again shortly, after i shut down and retrieve the numbers again.
 
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