Upgrading The Dell Inspiron 6400 Lappy, some help please

[leon]

Hi and good morning to you all, yep, it is me again, and would like some suggestions and help please.

I have a Dell Inspiron 6400 Lapppy, it has served me well and still functions perfectly, but only has a small H/D capacity.

At the Moment I cart my desktop with us as we travel, and although this is good, and works well, it is bulky and takes up considerable room.

My question is this, can I replace the Lappy H/D with a bigger capacity, and can I retain my programs that are on the lappy and transfer them to the new H/D, or do I just load a new H/D and start from scratch so to speak.

Some advice would be much appreciated.

Leon

[ZeroID (Brent)]

You can replace the HD ( I do this all the time ) and there are programs that will migrate your apps and files across but I haven't used those. I rebuild from OEM disks or Ghost images at work so can't advise on that.

If your HD is over 3-4 years old it is a good dea to replace as being portable they seem to get a hard life in laptops. If you have the install disks for all your current software and the original install disks for the OS (XP?) then away you go. You first need to save all your current files, favourites etc to a key or DVD so you can put them back on.
I use a mini connector and hook the old HD up onto a USB port so I can just drag stuff across.
Need to know what you're doing and where to find stuff Leon. Find a savy geek friend and they can probably assist. It's not that hard to do, just got to be careful.

[mithrandir (Andrew)]

Again Leon, you need to know what sort of disk it is. Laptops can have IDE or SATA.

I find the easiest way to move files is to put the new disk in the right variety of USB disk case, boot the lappy with a CD or USB stick containing Clonezilla and follow the directions.

Then shut down, swap the disks between lappy and case, and boot.

When you're sure the new disk is OK, and boots, and your programs work, wait a couple of weeks, format the old one and us it for something not vital.

It is never a good idea to trust your files to a new disk until it has been working for a while. Disks either fail quickly or after a long and useful life. I've seen a very expensive disk fail a couple of hours after it was correctly installed by well trained engineers.

[leon]

Great advice, many thanks indeed.

Leon