Upgrade Laptop Hard Drive

[phorte]

So, I've had this Asus F3Jv for about 10months now, and its got a 120gb hdd in it. Which frankly isn't enough space. So I'm looking at upgrading. I thought about just buying a 250gb external. But had an external with a separate power supply etc, and i do like to use my laptop portably a fair bit, would be a pain.

So here the plan:
-Upgrade the internal 120GB Hitachi SATA drive to a 250 GB drive. These are the two I've found at my local computer store: WD 250GB SATA 8mb (http://www.umart.com.au/pro/products_listnew.phtml?id=10&id2=132&bid=2&sid=24506) or Samsung 250Gb SATA 8mb (http://www.umart.com.au/pro/products_listnew.phtml?id=10&id2=132&bid=2&sid=24104)

-Take the existing internal and buy an external hdd enclosure, this is one I've been looking at Vantec Nexstar 3 eSata (http://www.umart.com.au/pro/products_listnew.phtml?id=10&id2=93&bid=2&sid=23174)

So first off. will this work?? which hdd of the two would u recommend. (apparently the wd has some quiet technology etc). And also what software would you recommend to ghost over the existing hard drive to the new drive?

Thanks all.

-Phorte

[hybrid101]

i'm happy with a 160gb external:)

[Templarian]

Should work. I've got two hard drives in my laptop right now with 160gig and I'm thinking I should of got one of those static state drives and the second just regular huge.

[Theros]

Heh... SSD is so expensive, but worth it I suppose. Although you sacrifice so much space. Anyway, for example go to newegg.com, go to Harddrivers, and check under laptops. Any small frame harddrive should worth in any recent laptop with the proper connections.... basically yeah, it'll work.

BTW, how's your experience with Asus been?

[phorte]

well, i went an bought all thoose parts, and im not the proud owner of 150gb of free space, as compared to 30 before. And ive now got a nice little 120gb external hard drive. and with my 80gb ipod classic, i have 0.45Tb of storage for a laptop. pretty groovy. haha. Had a bit of trouble cloning the hard drive over, cause i have partitions and a hidden recovery partition, and had to use a few differnt programs to get it to copy the MBR over correctly. but yay. no storage issues for me now, well not for a year or so.

@theros - ive been extremely happy with my asus. Its a pretty sexy looking machine, and its runs very nicely. I was tossing up between the dell and the asus. I had used other peoples dell computers, and they always seem to be full of alot of dell crap that you dont want. The asus default install was moderatley clean, a few things like asus dvd thing i got rid of. Never run into any hardware faults, and the laptop has pretty much been running nonstop since february. Its sturdy too, i bought a backpack with a padded laptop comparment, and i treat it like a normal backpack and the laptop is fine. So to sum up, i would def reccomend Asus laptops.

[BS]

If you got a SSD your boot up time would be so fast.

[Theros]

well, i went an bought all thoose parts, and im not the proud owner of 150gb of free space, as compared to 30 before. And ive now got a nice little 120gb external hard drive. and with my 80gb ipod classic, i have 0.45Tb of storage for a laptop. pretty groovy. haha. Had a bit of trouble cloning the hard drive over, cause i have partitions and a hidden recovery partition, and had to use a few differnt programs to get it to copy the MBR over correctly. but yay. no storage issues for me now, well not for a year or so.

@theros - ive been extremely happy with my asus. Its a pretty sexy looking machine, and its runs very nicely. I was tossing up between the dell and the asus. I had used other peoples dell computers, and they always seem to be full of alot of dell crap that you dont want. The asus default install was moderatley clean, a few things like asus dvd thing i got rid of. Never run into any hardware faults, and the laptop has pretty much been running nonstop since february. Its sturdy too, i bought a backpack with a padded laptop comparment, and i treat it like a normal backpack and the laptop is fine. So to sum up, i would def reccomend Asus laptops.

Hmm, yeah. Its odd though, since the F series is typically the worst quality of all of the Asus lineup since its their "budget" models. However, I guess their worst quality laptops are still better than the industry average lol. More power to Asus! I've got a Asus G1s, although I do regret my decision now, and if I could do it again I'd buy a XPS M1330, and upgrade my desktop) and all Asus needs to do is work on Battery Life and I'd be happy.

[phorte]

yeah actually, battery life is a bit of a downfall. running max performance, id be lucky to get an hour and a half, but u can stretch it out to about 2 and a half on battery saving mode. But i dont really use it on battery for extended periods though.

[Theros]

Man, maybe we should start a Asus Fanclub hah :P

[phorte]

mmm so i hit a hurdle in my brilliant plan. The external caddy wont mount the old hdd over usb correctly. I put it into the caddy and plug it in. Says new hardware recognised etc, shows a new drive letter under removable drives as I drive. So i double click on that and it comes up with "please insert a disk into drive I:". If i go to Computer Management it doesnt even show a partition on the external drive. It just shows it as blank, not even as unallocated space. Any ideas? I think i need to tottally wipe the old dream so its completey blank, then i should be able to initialise the drive and all that nonsense.

[Theros]

mmm so i hit a hurdle in my brilliant plan. The external caddy wont mount the old hdd over usb correctly. I put it into the caddy and plug it in. Says new hardware recognised etc, shows a new drive letter under removable drives as I drive. So i double click on that and it comes up with "please insert a disk into drive I:". If i go to Computer Management it doesnt even show a partition on the external drive. It just shows it as blank, not even as unallocated space. Any ideas? I think i need to tottally wipe the old dream so its completey blank, then i should be able to initialise the drive and all that nonsense.

Is your old OS still loaded on there? that's why I think. Not sure if you can boot over a USB external harddrive, I know you can do it with a thumb drive, but those are different?

[phorte]

nope i managed to wipe the old hdd by plugging it into my mates computer via esata. By elmination ive deduced that the caddy usb thingy doesnt want to communicate with that particular hard drive. I swapped the hard drive back over (had to reinstall windows and all that on the old 120gig drive. put the 250 into the caddy and it recognised both partitions as seperate drives and everything. swapped them back with the 250 inside the laptop and plugged the 120 into the caddy. I noticed that it would call the drive (the one i cant actually access) "Initos INI-650" did a bit of searching and Inito make USB to sata bridge hardware. So the computer is only recognising the caddy, but the caddy isnt recognising that particular drive, but it will recognise other drives.

Sooooo, i have a feeling there is some funky thing about the way MBR's on the 120gig drive are setup, i basicly want to be completely wipe it. not just format partitions but completely wipe it as if it were brand new. would i need to do that via dos or somtin? or could i do it via linux, if i booted knoppix or ubuntu of a cd?