New laptop hard drive & reinstalling windows vista

DaveG247

Morning,

So having posted last week Closed suggested reinstalling windows

I've decided to give this a go on my Dell studio 15 laptop rather than getting a new machine.

While am at it reckon am going to fit a new hard drive and thought I'd go ssd hybrid http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BHRWHNI/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=8KVMRUJQCZ0R&coliid=I1IVJKLIDP8HMI

Suppose the first question would be will this hard drive fit? The original drive is a http://www.amazon.co.uk/320GB-Scorpio-WD3200BEVT-SATA-5400rpm/dp/B0013E0A0M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396173868&sr=8-1&keywords=wd3200bevt

I've had a look in the speed up sticky and I've installed macrum to backup my data which am going to do to an external hard drive, am I best to use image option or clone was just hoping to keep the old hard drive for now in case I need anything.

When I reinstall, I'm running vista but don't have any disks. The laptop has C: and called recovery which am guessing has the windows backup file in it? When installing to a new drive how would I just installed the OS to the ssd part of the drive? Am not too bothered about putting all my data back on the laptop as I have most of my pictures, videos music saved to external drive. My biggest worry is making sure that everything works again with the correct drivers.

Any help would be great.

closed

image backup always - clone will wipe your external hard disk which is a bad idea if you have other data on there or want to use it for other things, create the macrium boot cd too. Anything really important, backup somewhere else too, external drives can fail at the most inconvenient times.

Personally, Unless you need the space, I'd just factory restore the drive you've got and see if meets your speed requirements, should boot under 35 seconds afterwards (when it's finished a lot of patching). Vista factory restores on Dells are usually done with F8, advanced. Remove mcafee or whatever came with it, then try avast free.

If you then want to move to a hybrid ssd, create a new Full (ie all partitions) backup image of the newly reinstalled and patched vista, and restore it to the new drive using the boot cd.

drivers shouldnt be a problem, they are all there in the backup images.

As well as all that, there may be a means of creating the vista disc via dell software installed at purchase.

patman99

If your intention is to create a duplicate of the drive you already have installed, but on a new HDD, then I would suggest that instead of a fresh install, you hook the new drive up to the laptop/PC with the old drive still in and using HDClone to clone it.

NiftyDigits

DaveG247 wrote: »

Morning,

So having posted last week Closed suggested reinstalling windows

I've decided to give this a go on my Dell studio 15 laptop rather than getting a new machine.

While am at it reckon am going to fit a new hard drive and thought I'd go ssd hybrid http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BHRWHNI/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pd_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=8KVMRUJQCZ0R&coliid=I1IVJKLIDP8HMI

Suppose the first question would be will this hard drive fit? The original drive is a http://www.amazon.co.uk/320GB-Scorpio-WD3200BEVT-SATA-5400rpm/dp/B0013E0A0M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396173868&sr=8-1&keywords=wd3200bevt

I've had a look in the speed up sticky and I've installed macrum to backup my data which am going to do to an external hard drive, am I best to use image option or clone was just hoping to keep the old hard drive for now in case I need anything.

When I reinstall, I'm running vista but don't have any disks. The laptop has C: and called recovery which am guessing has the windows backup file in it? When installing to a new drive how would I just installed the OS to the ssd part of the drive? Am not too bothered about putting all my data back on the laptop as I have most of my pictures, videos music saved to external drive. My biggest worry is making sure that everything works again with the correct drivers.

Any help would be great.

Service Tag?

DaveG247

Cheers all Service Tag DHJN84J

patman99

Read yor previous thread on the laptop. If you can get it to boot into Windows then download and run a program called 'Crystaldiskinfo' (yes, there are no spaces in the name). This will read the info from the drive's 'SMART' chip which stores all the info regarding the health of the drive.

If it is still 'blue' rather than 'amber' or 'red', then stick with what you have got. Go with backing all your music/photos/documents to a safe place (ie burn them to a DVD R/W or drag/drop onto a USB harddrive/pen drive or SD card) for safe keeping.

Then reset the laptop and try pressing 'f11' on boot-up to see if you get a 'restore to factory default' screen pop-up.
If you do, then you can let the laptop do a restore to factory settings before transferring all your stuff back.

If the drive shows as amber or red, then I would used HDClone to clone your existing drive on to a new one (HDClone will clone the whole drive including the restore partition, thus allowing you to follow the advice re:- 'f11').

I used the HDClone method when the HDD in my HP TM2 developed a surface fault and it saved my day as I didn't have any restore discs.

NiftyDigits

DaveG247 wrote: »

Cheers all Service Tag DHJN84J

That indicates a DELL Vostro 1510.


Is that correct?