Hard Drive Failure.

Hi all,

I'm going through the various recommendations on rescuing a computer after a hard drive failure.

The computer said 'Can't find OS' or similar.
I'd been backing up my stuff, when finally things went funny, and Windows told me to make an immediate backup as HD death is imminent.

However, I can still run Windows, and use it fine. But, the windows backup failed. I've made sure I've copied all my personal files to an external drive. Occasionally there is an error when I try to copy something.

Anyway, I've managed to get everything that matters.

My next step is to try to make a total copy of everything on the harddrive so that when I get a new one, I can copy it straight to that, plug it in and press go. I believe that's called a clone?
Can I put a clone copy onto my external harddrive, and then copy it to the new internal drive?

Also, my current broke drive is this:
http://www.play.com/PC/PCs/4-/3438205/-/Product.html

Can I replace it with this:
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/laptops/momentus/momentus_7200/

Also, I have no idea where my Windows backup CD is. Is there any way round that problem? That's kind of why I was hoping to make a clone.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Robert

 

Having gone through everything on my hard drive to check I have everything of value, I have found a few files which fail to copy, or just cause the system to lock up. It sounds like a reinstall from scratch would be the best thing. I'll try a backup though.

I guess the main reason I wanted to clone it, or similar is because I done have access to the recovery disc. However, when I looked at the Acronis sw it showed up an extra partition that I hadn't seen before:
NTFS: Recovery 5GB: FS: NTFS Partition 0x27 (Unknown)

I got the license key off the System info as it was worn out on the sticker!!
It is in the form xxxxx-OEM-xxxxxxx-xxxxx.

My computer is an Advent (I think that's where I went wrong!) 6311 with Vista.

Also, I'm not sure what I can replace the hard drive with.

At the moment it's a 120GB 5400rpm SATA.
I'd like a quicker and larger one, i.e. 250GB 7200 SATA.

Is this safely interchangable?
How can I find out if a particular HD will work in my laptop. Any recomendations?

Thanks again for your help.

 

Any 2.5" SATA hard drive will work in your laptop. Personally I would recommend a Western Digital, but there are some other good bands out there. Rule of thumb is stick to a name brand (Western Digital, Seagate etc) and you should be fine.

 

In the end, I found my recovery disc. You don't get one with the Advent, but can make one when you first boot it up. Fortunately I did (even though I'd forgotten) and even more fortunately I found it.

So, it was all quite easy, replace the drive, reboot, put in the recovery disc and about an hour later I was ready to go.

Thanks for all your help guys.