Preventing a laptop disaster

cwoodham

My daughter has just bought a boxed Toshiba Equium L40 17M laptop with Vista Home Premium from PC World. We asked about reinstalling the OS on a new drive if the hard drive failed just after the warranty period and didn't really get a satisfactory answer. The Toshiba came with a recovery disk. What I would like to know is how to prevent a future problem if/when the hard drive fails. I know how to back up data and clone a disk as I do this with my desktop. But what about a laptop?

1. I asked for disks with the Vista OS but they wouldn't give us this. The guy said they don't do this because people would copy and distribute it. Should I have been given the OS disks? Is the Recovery disk sufficient to reinstall Vista on a new hard drive if we have problems later?

2. I have Norton Ghost and can buy an external hard drive. Can I clone the laptop hard drive to an external drive which I can fit later to the laptop when that drive fails? Would this work? Is there a particular size of drive needed to fit into a laptop.

Thanks

PaulK_3

Depends on what kind of recovery disk set you have, some are just boot disks designed to kick start a recovery partition hidden on the HD. Is it a recovery CD or DVD?

russ_gillespie

First of all, WOW, I wish the customers I encountered had the forward thinking you have!

In answer to number 1. OS disks are very rarely given out. Recovery disks are usually designed to access a hidden partition on your hard disk and they restore the factory installed Windows image from there. So if that is the case with toshibas (probable), then you cannot use the recovery disk on a blank hard disk.

In answer to 2. Yes you can clone using Ghost and an external hard disk. Newer versions of Ghost have USB support. Store the image on the external disk, then if your harddrive ever goes you can restore the image.

Hope this helps.


Russ

russ_gillespie

Also, dont forget your Laptop has a genuine Vista COA on the bottom. So if you could get a copy of an actual installation cd for vista home premium then you can install it using that COA. Then you can usually get drives from the manufacturers website.

Stick with your cloning though. It's far less hassle.

cwoodham

It's a Product Recovery CD. The User Manual says:
If preinstalled files are damaged, use the Product Recovery disk to restore them. To restore the operating system and all preinstalled software follow the steps below:.

1. Load the Product Recovery disk in the drive and turn off computer.
2. Switch on and when the prompt appears press F12 to display the boot menu.
3. Use the cursor key to select the CD/DVD drive in the display menu
4. Follow the on screen instructions

It also says:

When you reinstall the Windows operating system, the hard disk will be reformatted and all data will be lost.

So can I use this disk to reinstall Vista on a new drive?

russ_gillespie

I would say probably not.


Russ

cwoodham

Great. Thanks for your replies. So that's bad news for anyone relying on the recovery disk in the event of a complete hard drive failure.

I'll go with the cloning option. Been googling on a backup hard drive for the Toshiba Equium laptop but finding it hard to get the spec right so it will fit directly in the machine. I think I need a 2.5 inch IDE drive, 9.5 cm high. Can anyone confirm this?

I've also seen a Plexus USB to IDE 2.5 inch/3.5 inch transfer adapter with power adapter on eBuyer. Presume I'll need this to clone the drive:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130517

Any thoughts? Thanks

russ_gillespie

To my knowledge 2.5" drives tend to get thicker the higher the capacity. So as long as you stick to the came capacity disk you currently have, it should fit fine.

I've never used an adapter quite like that before, but I would expect it to work just fine.


Russ

albertross_2

Clone/image it to DVD before you fill it with crap

vaio

cwoodham wrote: »

Great. Thanks for your replies. So that's bad news for anyone relying on the recovery disk in the event of a complete hard drive failure.

I'll go with the cloning option. Been googling on a backup hard drive for the Toshiba Equium laptop but finding it hard to get the spec right so it will fit directly in the machine. I think I need a 2.5 inch IDE drive, 9.5 cm high. Can anyone confirm this?

I've also seen a Plexus USB to IDE 2.5 inch/3.5 inch transfer adapter with power adapter on eBuyer. Presume I'll need this to clone the drive:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/130517

Any thoughts? Thanks

I’d just ghost it to DVD or ordinary usb external drive and worry about getting a 2.5 drive if the original fails

buglawton

It is frustrating how coy the Wintel monopoly is about making it really clear what you are being sold. I bought a refurb IBM laptop with fully licensed Win XP on it. All seemed fine and the touted method of recovery was to do a special boot procedure into that hidden partition. But when I checked carefully, no recovery partition existed on it. As it had a few months IBM/Lenovo warranty still on it, I called to ask how I would recover in case of a disaster. They hummed and haad and only when I insisted by escalating the call did I receive a set of recovery CD-roms. 2 Months later I did not have a hard drive issue but simply, Windows got corrupted and I could not fix it. Only using the recovery disks could this be fixed.