[nflug] Replacing a Notebook Drive ....

Sun Nov 23 03:15:14 EST 2008

Richard Hubbard wrote:
> I've replaced a few laptop hard drives, so I'll give it a go.
>
> First, as long as they are both the same kind of drive (sata/IDE/ etc)
> then the new one will work.  SATA 150 refers to the transfer speed,
> 1.5 mbits/sec.  If you get a SATA 3.0, then you will spending more
> money to not get any more speed.(the controller on the laptop won't
> figure it out, so the drive will talk at 1.5)
> The 5400 vs 7200 stuff...That is how fast the platter spins.  The
> faster it spins, the more quickly your computer will find stuff on the
> drive (access time).  (If you want, I can go into an explanation...but
> here is the wiki  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_drive).
> So in general, getting exactly the same hard drive will work great. 
> Getting a faster one, as long as it is in your budget, will be worth
> it (don't mortgage the house for the extra speed).
>
> Cloning...It can be done, but I haven't done it with Linux (which may
> be the easiest one to do it on). Here is the problem, because it is a
> laptop, you can't put two drives in there at once. On the other hand,
> if you get an external SATA usb enclosure (they are relatively
> inexpensive
> ...http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3293594&Sku=ULT40120  
> $20 at tigerdirect), you may be able to do it.
> If it is Windows, many hard drives come with a bundled app which will
> allow you to make a clone, which will work fine if it is going into
> the same machine.  Again, you still have the "laptop problem"
>
> Unfortunately, I will have to leave the rest of your questions for
> someone with more experience along those lines...
> Joe wrote:
>> I know this is a bit off topic, but I know you guys know disk drives.
>> Feel free to respond off list.
>> I'm not sure how much detail is needed to answer this, so I'll try to
>> err on the side of too much.
>>
>> I have an HP dv5000 notebook (Centrino duo 1.6GHz) dual boot kubuntu
>> hardy and Win XP.
>> It has a Seagate ST9120821AS Momentus 5400.2 - 120GB SATA-150 5400 rpm
>> drive that still works, but has a partition with too many hard errors to
>> map out in hardware.  I need to replace it while it still works.
>>
>> I can get (almost) the same drive (5400.3 - whatever that means) for
>> around $50, but I see I could also get
>> a 7200rpm 200GB for around $75.  The first one of these I found is a
>> Hitachi Travelstar 7k200 which is also SATA-150 and has 16MB cache
>> instead of 8MB.
>>
>> Questions:
>>
>> As long as I stick to SATA-150 and 2.5", will any drive work?  Does
>> increased capacity present any issues?
>>
>> Will a 7200 rpm drive eat my battery much faster, get much hotter, or
>> make any more noise?
>>
>> Will a faster drive noticeably improve performance?
>> I do mostly web surfing, email, passive multimedia
>> (watching/listening/peer to peer file sharing) - not
>> authoring/editing/serving), digital photos (lots), and word
>> processing. I'm not a gamer.
>>
>> Any brand/model recommendations/warnings?
>>
>> Once I get the new drive:
>>  
>> What's the easiest way to clone everything from the old drive to the new
>> one?
>>
>> I do have some pieces of the puzzle:
>> I have an external SATA/IDE to usb adapter I can plug the new drive
>> into, so the hardware part is probably solved, but I'm not that familiar
>> with dd commands, etc.  I can use gparted to partition/format the new
>> drive.
>> And, if I need them, I have a couple of usb disk drives, one that's
>> unused with 120GB total and another that has stuff on it, but has over
>> 100GB free.
>>
>> Should I make bigger partitions (to use the bigger drive) before or
>> after everything is transfered from the old drive to the new one?
>>
>> Will I have to create a new MBR or can the old one just be copied to the
>> new drive?
>>
>> The notebook has the usual windoze garbage on it  - a bunch of restore
>> data because windoze was pre-installed and it didn't come with
>> installation CD's.  I need to  make sure all that gets copied too.
>>
>> qtparted shows:
>> /dev/sda1 ntfs 39.06 GB windoze
>> /dev/sda2 ext3 29.78GB spare
>>         the one with the disk errors on it
>>         (so gparted failed when I tried to
>>         merge it into sda4)
>> /dev/sda4 ext3 38.4GB kubuntu
>> /dev/sda3 extended 1.69GB
>>    /dev/sda5 Linux-swap 1.69GB
>> /dev/sda-1free 2.86GB hidden
>>         (I couldn't figure out how to merge
>>         this into another partition.
>>         gparted didn't seem to
>>         want to have anything to do with it.)
>>
>> What, if anything, do I need to do about /dev/sda-1?
>>
>> Why couldn't I get rid of it?
>>
>> Could it be some sort of hidden restore or hibernate partition for
>> windoze?  When I run virus scans, etc. on windoze, it goes through a big
>> pile of stuff that seems to be there to restore/reinstall windoze and
>> all the junk that came with it, so I think that must all be on
>> /dev/sda1.
>>
>> One last thing:
>>
>> When I exited qtparted (run from konsole), I saw the following and need
>> to know what's up with it.
>> It may have to do with /dev/sdb which is a usb disk drive with two data
>> partitions on it, one for windoze and one for  Linux.  I'm not worried
>> about the ntfs stuff because gparted handles that without blinking.  Or,
>> the messages may just be because I ran it from within Linux on the same
>> drive because I knew I wasn't going to change anything.
>>
>> sudo qtparted
>> [sudo] password for bigbird:
>> No Implementation: Support for opening ntfs file systems is not
>> implemented yet.
>> Error: File system was not cleanly unmounted!  You should run e2fsck.
>> Modifying an unclean file system could cause severe corruption.
>> Error: File system was not cleanly unmounted!  You should run e2fsck.
>> Modifying an unclean file system could cause severe corruption.
>> No Implementation: Support for opening ntfs file systems is not
>> implemented yet.
>> Warning: File system has errors!  You should run e2fsck.
>> Error: File system was not cleanly unmounted!  You should run e2fsck.
>> Modifying an unclean file system could cause severe corruption.
>> bigbird at sananda:~$
>>
>>
>> TIA.
>>
>> Joe
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Some posts on the web say a 7200 rpm drive uses more power than a 5400
rpm one.  This makes sense to me and means don't get faster unless you
really need it because it will eat the battery.

I did some googling on cloning drives.  This is what I came up with.  If
anyone has any suggestions/comments, let me know before this fool rushes in.

To clone a notebook drive:

1) Boot from a livecd.  You can't (reliably) clone an active file system.
2) Connect the new drive as a usb drive with an adapter, etc.
3) Figure out what device name it has (/dev/sdb is likely)
4) Just for the heck of it, see if it can be mounted or looked at (with
gparted, etc.), but don't write anything to it.
5) make sure the usb drive is unmounted, but still connected
6) As root:
dd if=dev/sda of=dev/sdb
If it wasn't sdb (step 3), use the right device name instead.
7) Come back *much* later.  It's running at USB 2.0 speeds and disk
drives are big.
8) When it's done, use a partition manager to adjust partition sizes (if
the new drive is larger).

If you happen to have a tower with two empty bays/controller slots,
cables, and 2.5 to 3.5 adapters, then the whole thing can be done much
faster.

If the new drive is smaller, then this approach won't work.  You have to
do something to cut down what you're copying to the size of the target
and make sure there's enough free space left in the target partitions so
the OS's (and you) have somewhere to write new files.  Or, get a bigger
drive.

Joe