1492
Washington, DC
Moderator
Joined: 04/08/2005
View Profile
|
Bill S. wrote:Thanks for the help. Expanded Disk Drives shows as HTS541080G9SA00.
That's a Hitachi Travelstar 80G HD-5400rpm, so about 75G available formatted space. Luckily, it's a SATA drive, so you have a number of drive upgrade options.
|
Bill S.
Indian River, Delaware
Senior Member
Joined: 03/06/2001
View Profile
|
This sounds involved. I guess I have to buy 2 drives, as I don't have a USB backup drive with me on the road. Seems like I need a USB drive to clone this one to, and then a new replacement drive to install in the computer, to clone back to?
Bill, (aka Capt.Bill)
Indian River, De
2002 Horizon 36LD, Cat 330
Practicing retirement! 
|
1492
Washington, DC
Moderator
Joined: 04/08/2005
View Profile
|
Not necessarily. Just take the new larger replacement drive and place into an inexpensive 2.5" USB HD drive enclosure or cradle such as this Rosewill. I prefer HD cradles as they are more versatile, and you just need to drop the drive in and you're ready to go.
Download and install the free EaseUS® Disk Copy 2.3.1. Follow the instructions for "cloning" your drive using only "sector-by-sector" copy. This makes an identical copy of your old drive.
Once finished, remove the old hard drive and install the new replacement drive. Typically, involves only removing a few screws. Just startup as you normally would. You may have to go back into Easeus Partition Manager, and expand the C: partition to use the rest of the unallocated space on the new drive.
You can then place the old drive into the cradle and re-use it to backup files.
|
Bill S.
Indian River, Delaware
Senior Member
Joined: 03/06/2001
View Profile
|
Excellent. Thanks for the advice. I will be making a trip to CompUSA tomorrow.
|
gijoecam
Midwest
Senior Member
Joined: 07/22/2011
View Profile
Good Sam RV Club Member
 Offline
|
1492 is spot-on here... Buy the new drive you want to install in the laptop, use the software you have to clone the old drive to the new drive via a dock (NewEgg usually has some good deals on docks) then install the new drive, and the computer *should* see the new drive just like the old drive, only bigger (once you enlarge the partition, that is...). Then you can use the old drive as a separate external backup drive, or purchase an enclosure for it (again NewEgg.com is a good source) and use it as a portable drive.
|
|
|
8.1 Van
Millstone NJ
Senior Member
Joined: 03/20/2008
View Profile
Offline
|
With HDD so cheap why would anyone want resize a partition when the other drive has such little free space. I keep my HDDs under 50% full to keep them from slowing down when writing and reading files. If you enjoy a slow PC then fill them up.
2002 Chevy Express LS 3500 8.1 155" WB passenger van 3.73 posi (GT4/G80)
2003 Thor Citation 41-ZBSR 41ft TT
|
Bill S.
Indian River, Delaware
Senior Member
Joined: 03/06/2001
View Profile
|
8.1 Van wrote:With HDD so cheap why would anyone want resize a partition when the other drive has such little free space. I keep my HDDs under 50% full to keep them from slowing down when writing and reading files. If you enjoy a slow PC then fill them up.
Well it was a mistake on my part...
I thought I had a hundred GB unused, not MB. So now that
I know the HD is on;y 80 gig to begin with, I have now ordered a new 250 GB drive to replace it.
|
bwanshoom
Darnestown, MD
Senior Member
Joined: 05/29/2007
View Profile
Good Sam RV Club Member
Offline
|
As a general rule, full hard drives don't slow a system down. If they start impacting the ability for the system to allocate virtual memory then it might have an impact, but the OS will tell you when that happens. It doesn't take longer for the system to access a file when the system is full versus empty - modern file systems are not slowed by the amount of data on the drive.
2010 Cougar 322 QBS
2005 GMC Sierra 2500HD LLY CC/SB 4x4 SLT
Pullrite SuperGlide 18K
|
1492
Washington, DC
Moderator
Joined: 04/08/2005
View Profile
|
8.1 Van wrote:With HDD so cheap why would anyone want resize a partition when the other drive has such little free space.
Except, HD's doubled in price in the recent months due to flooding in Thailand. Prices are slowly coming down, but still hovering at the high end.
|
gijoecam
Midwest
Senior Member
Joined: 07/22/2011
View Profile
Good Sam RV Club Member
Offline
|
They're still cheap... Even solid state hard drives (which are very well-suited for a laptop) are dropping like rocks. Last I saw, about a buck-and-a-quarter to a buck-fifty a gig for a SSD, 50 cents or less per gig for a conventional desktop drive, with laptop drives falling someplace in the middle. Still a bargain by any measure!
ETA Strike that... Laptop drives and conventional drives have dropped like a rock in the last couple of months... Looks like laptop drives are down around $0.20/gig, give or take a bit... Newegg.com has an awesome selection and very reasonable prices.
|
|
|
