Free imaging software saved the day!

I got a new notebook last year but only with 120gb drive and have been wanting to upgrade to 500gb ever since. Since I'm on a budget I tried and tried to use various freeware imaging programs, to no avail. The one I'd placed the highest hopes in, Macrium Reflect, thwarted me when I got Missing NTLDR, then Missing BOOTMGR screens.

My search the other night went to looking for the most reasonably priced imaging program when I lucked upon the Acronis True Image WD Edition.

Took a while to run and I wasn't able to keep using the computer like I was with Macrium, but the bottom line is that when I put the new drive in my computer, it started up and ran! Now I have a tiny notebook with 500gb and thought I'd share the info in case any of you are planning a similar expedition.

I did have two problems when I first got up and running, the first of which was a message saying that I might have an invalid copy of Windows 7 and the other was that I couldn't resize the partitions the way I wanted to.

An automatic connection to Microsoft and I was quickly awarded a seal of approval.

The partition problem took a bit more effort, but again, I was able to use a free version of EASUS Partition Magic to re-size my C: drive to 80gb and my D: drive to 320gb. Don't ask me what happened to the other 100gb because I don't want to do any more about it for now, but I suppose that sometime in the next week I'll get looking at it.

There is one stipulation for the download of Acronis True Image WD Edition to work, and that is that there is a WD drive detectable at the time you attempt the download. The first time I tried I got an error message saying that no WD product was detected. Then I plugged in the connectors to the new drive and voila, second attempt at downloading proceeded immediately.

Hope this is of some help to someone out there and if so, just shine your flashlight in the air for me a moment or two.

I had my own nightmare when I tried to upgrade the 500 GB 5400 RPM HDD in my new laptop to a 500 GB 7200 RPM hybrid hard drive. I originally was going to try imaging the OS and then reimaging it onto the new drive, but the OEM and boot partitions ended up causing issues. I ended up finding a free utility called Clonezilla, which can be used to clone partitions or the entire contents of a physical hard drive to a new drive.

Of course, after I did this the drive went bad and I RMAed it, and when I got the new drive I just did a fresh windows install (crapware free, unlike the OEM install).

I also tried Paragon backup and recovery a little. It is also free. However I am now using the built in windows backup utility, just for convenience (so I don't have to rely on a third party utility that might not be supported well, or that I might misplace product keys to).

For a slightly more complicated (ok, that was probably an understatement) approach, ImageX.exe from the Windows Automated Installation Kit can also be used. It's a free download from Microsoft, and it's primarily used for IT to deploy system images.

Personally, I use Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery (not free) because I create system images frequently (keeps your system running smoothly when you wipe every two months ).