Aza Posted June 10, 2007 Report Share Posted June 10, 2007 To combat piracy etc, HP as with other manufacturers include a partition on your hard drive containing your OS backup files and drivers etc. You are only allowed to burn one copy of this disc too. Anyhow, my HDD is 160Gb, which in today's age of technology is not really enough for me. Question is, seeming as I don't have another expansion bay, an upgrade to another drive is inevitable and I will have to replace my existing drive and do a transfer. How do I get around reinstalling my operating system onto another hard drive? I have been wondering whether I can't because a HDD is an integral part of your BIOS and changing that affects your BIOS configuration, which in turn means your system details and ultimately Windows Licence has changed. I have Norton Save & Restore, but want to know where I am jumping and if I can land safely before doing so. Any thoughts, ideas? Cheers everyone Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bjorn Posted June 10, 2007 Report Share Posted June 10, 2007 save the hassle & get an external HDD mate! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheSaint Posted June 10, 2007 Report Share Posted June 10, 2007 you can swap hard drives out of computers all day long and it wont affect your BIOS in the way you think it will. Once you have made your copy of the operating system, onto CD you can get the product key from the sticker on your computer which will allow you to reinstall the operating system on your new hard drive. Do you have such a sticker? Buying an external hard drive like bjorn suggested is the way i'd go unless disk access is your concern. Disk access of your existing hard drive will be far quicker than the external hard drive you buy. This is down to having to use USB interfaces. (USB2.0 is ok though i've found). So if this external hard drive is just going to be hosting mp3s etc then USB will be fine Pricing: Internal hard drives used to be cheaper than external hard drives, not anymore: 320GB External Hard Drive - £52.99 http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/116143 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aza Posted June 10, 2007 Author Report Share Posted June 10, 2007 I have made a backup disc of my recovery files needed for rebooting etc to default. I am just not sure whether the drivers for all the preconfigured hardware is included in there? I would ideally prefer to get an internal drive as these tend to be more reliable, less prone to crash etc and thus less likely to loose data as easily. Disc access time, is as you say much quicker internally, plus this requires an extra power source. I might have to contact HP to ask them about it and see whether I can copy everything over to a new drive. I would simply like to double my existing capacity and get an external for recovery Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheSaint Posted June 10, 2007 Report Share Posted June 10, 2007 Im not too up on HP computers but i'd hazard a guess, if you're installing XP SP2 as your OS, that all the drivers would be part of the operating system so you wouldnt need to worry about drivers. A backup plan would be to make a note of your hardware and download all the files from HP and put them all on a CDROM. There should be no differences between the stability of an internal drive and an external drive as in essence they are the same thing. (unless you get a solid state hard drive (which you wont)). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Briggsy Posted June 10, 2007 Report Share Posted June 10, 2007 If you want to save a lot of time and hassle, and keep your PC identical to how it is now, you can buy a program called "Ghost" by Norton. It clones your hard drive, and creates an identical copy of it to your new hard drive. You simply connect your new hard drive to the second IDE/SATA slot (whichever kind of drive you have), keep your original drive on slot one, and then run ghost - it'll then transfer everything over to your new drive. Once Ghost has completed its work, you'll be able to remove your old drive and clear it to use as a second data drive, and then use your new drive as the main drive - and because its a clone of your old drive, all your old settings, applications, data and everything else will be exactly how it was before. That would be the route I went down if I were upgrading to a bigger drive. :thumbsup: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aza Posted June 11, 2007 Author Report Share Posted June 11, 2007 Cheers Briggsy & Sainty... I'm going to email HP now and consult with them. Ghost sounds a good idea, as I have just noticed you cant seem to back up your RSS feeds from IE? There are other little tweaks I have probably carried out, but are not aware of so a clone would be ideal. I would simply just add another drive in series, however my bloody tower (shocking considering its HP) does not have another bay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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