| Author | Message | ||
     Thumper74 |
We lost the motherboard on our old laptop and picked up a used laptop, but our hard drive is a SATA and the 'new' laptop uses and IDE hard drive. Does cloning the hard drive have the capabilities to move software like Microsoft Office? We lost the registration information for Office a while ago, so just 'reinstalling' it isn't an option, but the SATA hard drive is still alive... | ||
| Seanp |
Cloning might not be the best option, as the hardware will be different, and the drivers might not work too well. What version of Windows are you using? | ||
| Greg_e |
Since it sounds like the laptop uses different hardware from the one that died, you won't be able to just clone everything. There is a product that will move apps, but I can't remember the name right now. | ||
| Thumper74 |
Both computers run Windows XP | ||
| Pwnzor |
 Different chipset means your cloned drive won't boot properly, if at all. The software can be moved from one drive to the other, AFTER you have installed windows on the new drive already mounted in the machine. But... but.... BUT.... You will have to meticulously duplicate all the registry keys for each and every software title you want to move. | ||
| Greg_e |
Well, if you are determined to do it no matter what we have been telling you, you might be able to force Clonezilla to clone from one to the other. It normally won't let you make an image of an SATA drive and clone it to a PATA drive so you have some work ahead of you. You will also need an SATA to USB adapter to read the "old" hard drive. If you boot into safe mode after the clone process and have all the drivers for the "new" laptop so you can install them from safe mode, it might work... ... Or it could turn into a huge mess that can only be recovered with the system recovery disks for the "new" laptop or with the OS disk and drivers. | ||
| Froggy |
Not true. At my job, our installers group uses a hard drive duplication machine, they will take an old IDE hard drive out of a 1.5ghz P4 machine and then clone it to the hard drive for the new 3ghz Core2 machine. It will boot into Windows fine, they just install new drivers for the chipset, videocard, audio. It is faster and less problematic than starting from scratch, especially with complex programs like Autocad and Photoshop that are on them. They do this for XP to XP machines, as far as I know they haven't done it on Vista/7 yet, so I don't know how well it works there. I was appalled at the idea at first, but after seeing it in action, as long as the machine continues to work fine (it usually does) they will leave it as is. The duplicator machine takes about 10-15 minutes to migrate most drives. | ||
| Rwven |
Acronis True Image clones drives perfectly. I've done several. It's also hardrive backup software. http://www.acronis.com/promo/ATIH2011/ATI-ALL/inde x.html?source=us_googleATI_b&ad=ati&c=5706733097&k =acronis%20true%20image&gclid=CMurq-25p6cCFcbc4Aod lSxTCg | ||
| Aesquire |
http://download.cnet.com/Easeus-Disk-Copy/3000-224 8_4-10867157.html?tag=mncol;5 this one worked for me. Pata to Sata worked fine.. make sure you have http://download.cnet.com/Ultimate-Boot-CD/3000-213 0_4-51584.html?tag=mncol;1 so you can check, create partitions, etc. Cloning a drive perfectly means that if your old drive is 200 gigs and the new one 750, you will have a 200 gig partition with your old drive stuff on it. Then you have to run partition software to make a second logical drive, or resize the partition. ( risky! ) Make a driver disc FIRST with all the drivers fresh off the web for motherboard, video card, and all other cards. ( sound card, etc. ) Many Modern motherboards have built in sound, networking, etc. etc. So it's several files. Oh, and back up your favorites, documents, and all files you don't want to lose. Stuff happens. I just built a computer for a buddy. i3-550 chip, GTS450 vid card. When we went to try his drive, BSOD. So we tossed in his XP disc. BSOD. Windows XP can't load on the latest stuff, it doesn't have the drivers for the newer Pata stuff, etc. But the drive out of my ( still old, but newer than his ) comp, and it works fine. Because it already had pata and Nvidia motherboard & vid card drivers. | ||
| Reepicheep |
+1 on the acronis products. But I only use them from going from same machine to same machine, so +1 on just installing from scratch on the new machine anyway. There is a "half install" where windows has been put on the machine, but has not tweaked itself yet to find all the drivers and set up all the keys and such. Thats what most of the "one image to install on lots of machines" use (in my experience). You need that original image though, not the result of that image being tuned out to a particular hardware setup. You could try Acronis, if it can be done, they can probably do it. I don't try it, as my windows installations seem to self snarl anyway, so even when I am keeping the same OS on the same hardware, a reinstall from scratch every 18 months or so seems to result in much better running machines, just to clear out driftwood. Windows 7 looks MUCH better than anything that came before though, so perhaps those days are over... | ||
| Pwnzor |
Froggy.... really? I can't tell you how many times I have tried to do this and it just failed epically. Of course, it has been a while and perhaps with SP3 things are different. last time I tried it, was SP1 and going from a P3 to a P4. Live and learn. | ||
| Thumper74 |
This seems like it's above my skill level... I may just have my wife just get comfy with Open Office Not entirely sure what to do. I swapped an old 8 gig hard drive from my first PC, a 350 mhz NEC into a new HP desktop to trouble shoot the newer PC and it worked fine. | ||
| Leechykyle |
I just cloned my HD a few days ago. Went from a 360GB SATA 3Gb/s to a 1TB SATA 6Gb/s. I used the software provided by Western Digital. Acronis True Image WD Edition. Worked great. Nice and easy. | ||
| Pwnzor |
I may just have my wife just get comfy with Open Office I can't recommend this enough. I've been using it for a few years now, and love it love it love it. It literally does everything that MS Office does, and in many cases I find the layout to be more intuitive. | ||
| Thumper74 |
I've been using it with no ill effects on the desktop, but she's fighting for Word. I know it does everything that Word does, for free, but she doesn't care. $100+ is too much money to type | ||
| Bwbhighspl |
You've got mail. |
