Faulty Hard Drive?

Toxteth_OGrady

these are great disks and you get 4 x the storage space for just a few quid more. You may not use it all but it's much better vfm. I have 5 of these.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004J35JZ0/ref=asc_df_B004J35JZ03152191?smid=A17AS5ETPMZ9A1&!!!!!googlecouk06-21&linkCode=asn&creative=22218&creativeASIN=B004J35JZ0

Iconic

Toxteth_OGrady wrote: »

these are great disks and you get 4 x the storage space for just a few quid more. You may not use it all but it's much better vfm. I have 5 of these.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B004J35JZ0/ref=asc_df_B004J35JZ03152191?smid=A17AS5ETPMZ9A1&!!!!!googlecouk06-21&linkCode=asn&creative=22218&creativeASIN=B004J35JZ0

Thanks. I will go for it:beer:

stilltheone

Are you going to clone the old HDD? If not, you may lose some functionality. Sounds as if you will anyway.

Iconic

stilltheone wrote: »

Are you going to clone the old HDD? If not, you may lose some functionality. Sounds as if you will anyway.

Yes. I have copied an image of the faulty drive to a usb drive using Macrium. It looks like I will still have to create a bootable Vista CD..... I will have a look at Nlite.

stilltheone

Iconic wrote: »

Yes. I have copied an image of the faulty drive to a usb drive using Macrium. It looks like I will still have to create a bootable Vista CD..... I will have a look at Nlite.

I expect that you know what you are doing.... looks like this.

nLite? Doesn't that support Vista. I think that you mean vLite.
Don't you have your original DELL Vista disc anymore?

Iconic

stilltheone wrote: »

I expect that you know what you are doing.

Yes and no!

I haven't used disc imaging software before but have reinstalled XP quite a few times.

Macrium seems pretty straightforward until you come to doing the bootable CD.

I have got the original Vista os cd and if I use Vlite I can load all the latest updates to a bootable cd and then put it on the new hard drive. I can then copy the Macrium files.

Does that make sense or am I missing something?

stilltheone

Iconic wrote: »

Yes and no!

I haven't used disc imaging software before but have reinstalled XP quite a few times.

Macrium seems pretty straightforward until you come to doing the bootable CD.

I have got the original Vista os cd and if I use Vlite I can load all the latest updates to a bootable cd and then put it on the new hard drive. I can then copy the Macrium files.

Does that make sense or am I missing something?

Have never owned a DELL, but I'm guessing that like many other large OEMs, they have a hidden partition on the HDD with a Restore Image.

Do you have DELL PC Restore or similar currently?

So again, I'm guessing that in order to keep that functionality you will have to clone the HDD and then put the newly cloned HDD into the DELL. Since you have already updated the old HDD to SP2 and assuming the cloning was performed correctly, there shouldn't be any major updates left to install.

I'm guessing that the original DELL Vista disc is configured to install without disturbing the hidden restore partition.
You can slipstream the disc and updates with vLite on to a new DVD and use that in the future as a Restore disc without mishap(again if done correctly). But I guess that is in the case of a full HDD failure.

These are just guesses, but you can test them for yourself.