Copy Laptop HDD to Bigger HDD

[Big Dave]

I am about to install a new hdd in my laptop. Rather than reinstall everything is there any easy way to copy from one disk to the other (different size disks). I can copy to an intermediate external drive if necessary.

[EllTheGamer]

If you have a way to connect both hard drives to one machine at once then you can copy the whole partition across to the new drive (no need to format....) and then expand the partition across the whole drive and you will retain all files and settings.

A quick search gave me this page with a list of free partition managers, i cannot recommend any though as i use partition magic a program that isn't free but has proven invaluable to me over the years.

[IAmATeaf]

I've found the easiest way to do this is to create a network boot disk for the lappy, boot up off it, connect to a network share then ghost the entire drive to the network share. Then replace the drive, bot up of the network boot disk, connect to the share and ghost the saved image back onto the new drive.

If you can't do this the you buy an adaptor which would allow you to connect the drive up to a normal IDE channel in a desktop PC, you could then ghost it off, connect the new drive and ghost the image back on.

[Funkstar]

Acronis Disk Director (and perhaps TrueImage) will do this for you.

It can cope with drives hooked to USB too. Or you could back up to a compressed DVD image of the original drive and then re-expand it out to the new one. With this method you also have a known backup point ready to be restored at any time

[staffsMike]

I just plug them both into one pc either using Ide adapters or normal sata ones depending on the drive and then use Ghost to Image one drive onto the other..Job Done..Usually

[hibby]

If you have a seagate or maxtor drive in your collection, I would suggest you look here: http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=108421. Free copy of TrueImage.