laptop with 2 hard drives?

1. Replace the failed HD in the laptop.
2. Boot the laptop using the Boot CD created by Ghost.
3. Plug the external HD into the USB2 port.
4. Restore the backed up files to the new internal HD.
The External USB2 HD permits me to back up more than
one computer.... not just my laptop.

What I'd like to do (in absence of having a 2nd

That could become involved if you do frequent
backups/clones. Guess it'd become easier after you've
done it a few times.

Jack Mac

 

Yes, you've got it right, assuming that the operating system has respectable USB
support, namely Windows 2000 or some flavor of Windows XP, which is my
assumption in making the following suggestions.

Make sure your cloning software marks the clone drive's Windows partition as
bootable.

On a fairly contemporary Dell notebook (and others as well), make sure you copy
the hidden diagnostic partition first, so you'll need a commercial product to do
so.

If you don't copy the diagnostic partition at all, you'll need to edit the boot
disk info to refer to partition 1 (Windows NT systems count partition numbers up
beginning with 1) rather than partition 2... Ben Myers

On Wed, 15 Sep 2004 04:51:11 GMT, "Brian K" <iibntgyea4_

 

Tim,

I wish I could give you a brand name for the USB-IDE converter I use, but its
yet another one of those stupid anonymous Taiwanese companies that do not put
their brand name on their products, because they don't want to be bothered (or
are linguistically unable) to support the product. This company ends up
screwing itself, because it has a neat all-purpose product and no brand-name
recognition.

The box is light blue with splashy graphics. The kit does include an external
2.5" drive housing plus adapters for 44-pin notebook standard drives and 40-pin
desktop drives (hard drive, CD-ROM, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD-RW).

To clone a drive, I do not bother to put the drive in the external housing. It
is not necessary. But it would be a good idea for more permanent use as an
external drive... Ben Myers

 

True. VERY unlikely today. But then, why roll the dice when there is a
guaranteed 100% solution to the problem as stated by the OP.

The potholes being???? How about some definite information based on real-life
experience???? I agree that if I was driving down the road and hit a pothole
while cloning the drive with my notebook plugged into the car's cigarette
lighter, THAT would be a pothole to avoid... Ben Myers

 

Thanks. I had pictured a D-Bay as an unused bay in the laptop.

*TimDaniels*

 

Thanks. My mind is just now getting out of the desktop mode.

Is this specific to laptops? In my desktop, as long as the
new clone is powered up for the first time without the original HD
connected, subsequent boots have the "other systems" (i.e. the
ones that weren't booted) as just other "local disks" with their file
systems fully visible and accessible for reads and writes. And
with the boot.ini file in the HD that is selected by the BIOS
pointing to all the bootable partitions on both of the HDs, I
can select which partition boots using Win XP's multi-boot
feature. I had assumed one could do this with a laptop, too.
Not true?

*TimDaniels*

 

OK. I was picturing an "adapter" as being a pair of
adapter *brackets* or a removable tray that allows one
to put a laptop HD in a desktop. Apparently, cooling is
adequate for a laptop HD just sitting on a desk - no
fan blowing on it necessary?

*TimDaniels*

 

I strongly suspect the same manufacturer sells the same product
to various other "manufacturers" in boxes having having the other
"manufacturer's" names. The same thing seems to be done with
round cables and fans and drive caddies and other after-market
homebuilder and hobbyist hardware.

*TimDaniels*

 

Right ... you would probably also need to get the 2.5"-to-3.5" cable
adapter and adapter brackets when putting the laptop drive in the
DualLink

This place has some adapters plus the first item looks like exactly
what you were looking for:
http://www.baber.com/drives/internal_hard_drives/laptops/conversionkit.htm
http://www.cablesnmor.com/hard-drive-converter.html

 

This sounds both complicated & expensive. My IBM ThinkPad has an
"Ultrabay", integral with the unit, which takes a variety of peripherals
(it came with a DVD/CD-RW unit). I bought a HDD Ultrabay adapter for
$45, which works great.

 

As I interpret your description, there is a slot in the
Thinkpad which accomodates an adapter and a laptop
hard drive, and the adapter converts between USB2
and EIDE. Is that right? Is the adapter an IBM
product or 3rd party?

*TimDaniels*

 

Adapter's made (marketed, anyway) by IBM, no USB involved - it's an
internal EIDE device, just like the DVD drive. This is what I bought for
my R40:

http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/s...Id=1888480&storeId=1&langId=-1&catalogId=-840

It works great - it's funny at first to have 2 HDDs in a laptop, but
cloning the C: HDD is a snap, of course.

 

Right, it's much like the bay for the battery and one of the
possibilities for the Ultrabay is for a 2nd battery to maximize
computing time while on battery.

2nd battery:

http://www-132.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/s...Id=1888468&storeId=1&langId=-1&catalogId=-840

View of Ultrabay:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-45902

It's also possible to put any HDD in an external case & use it as a USB
device (be sure to have USB2 on your laptop). No need in this case to
use a 2.5" HDD - both the drives & cases are more expensive. The 3.5"
HDDs & cases are pretty inexpensive.

The 2nd HDD in your laptop is ideal, of course, if you want to upgrade
the laptop to a bigger HDD.

 

It is, but it depends on Ghost / Partition Magic / etc. supporting a
USB2 device. With Ghost2003 you have to configure it to include the USB2
drivers - not a big deal, but if you don't do it, you're in for a very
frustrating time because Ghost won't see the USB HDD.

 

Dell does sell modular drives that install in the modular bay of
notebook computers. They are also USB drives, and can be used
externally to the computer.

 

See the first item at link below ...
http://www.baber.com/drives/internal_hard_drives/laptops/conversionkit.htm

 

This is one occasion where a drive cloning utility (e.g. Seagate's Seatools)
that runs under Windows may be the best bet. Windows will see the external
drive. The downside is that the Windows-based utility may crap out completely
if and when it encounters some data that is hopelessly messed up by bad physical
sectors. This can be a definite pitfall or pothole (Ron!) in cloning a drive
with bad sectors... Ben Myers

 

That's just what I'm looking for! Do you know if the equivalent
can be found in other makes of laptop PCs?

*TimDaniels*

 

Do you know if that involves a USB interface? The neat thing about
the IMB Ultrabay is that it doesn't involve USB (that I know of).

*TimDaniels*

 

The $149 kit from baber states very clearly that it uses a PCMCIA card which
provides the access to an IDE notebook drive hooked up to it. The pros and cons
for this approach are about the same as for a USB-IDE converter kit. The price
seems high, but, then, I guess I don't know how much a copy of Ghost costs,
either.

As for SATA on a notebook computer, not yet. Possibly in a year or two. The
speed advantage of SATA is outweighed by the extra heat generated by fast
spinning SATA drives... Ben Myers