Upgrade, replace, or something else

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Tim
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Hi friendly TP computer experts.
My laptop is about 4 years old and I've nearly filled the hard drive (90Gb ish I think). I've got all my photos on there (also backed up on an external hard drive and DVD) which take up quite a lot of the memory.

As I've only got a few Gb left I figure I need to do something about it! Should I
a) replace the laptop. This is the most expensive option and I'm generally happy with the laptop performance as I don't do anything strenuous on it, but I've heard Windows7 is much better than the Vista I've got.
b) buy a bigger hard drive for the current laptop. I'm not sure how this works with moving the existing OS, programs, data etc. A 320Gb drive would last me ages.
c) work out a better way of storing things so that I can free up the existing hard drive. I guess this would mean deleting all my photos and leaving them on the external drive and DVD only. For some reason I don't like the idea of deleting them, but this is probably me just being scared of losing them.

What would you do in my position?
 
b) buy a bigger hard drive for the current laptop. I'm not sure how this works with moving the existing OS, programs, data etc. A 320Gb drive would last me ages.
Click to expand...

Buy a bigger hard drive. You will need to install Vista on it using a disk. If you have less than 10% of your hard drive space free, you will suffer performance issues.
 
If you're happy with the laptop as is, buy a bigger hard drive. Depending on the facilities available to you (i.e. do you have access to be able to connect 2 drives to a PC at the same time) you may be able to do an image backup of your 90G HDD and just image it back onto the bigger HDD saving a reinstall. There are programs you can get to do this (I use drive snapshot here).
 
If you are happy with the performance I would suggest buying another external hard drive to backup all your photos and documents and then deleting them from the laptop.
That way you will have more space on the laptop and 2 copies on the external drives. One drive should then be stored off site or in a waterproof, fireproof safe.
 
arad85 said:
If you're happy with the laptop as is, buy a bigger hard drive. Depending on the facilities available to you (i.e. do you have access to be able to connect 2 drives to a PC at the same time) you may be able to do an image backup of your 90G HDD and just image it back onto the bigger HDD saving a reinstall. There are programs you can get to do this (I use drive snapshot here).
Click to expand...

I prefer the idea of still having my photos on the machine for when I need them (rather than just on an external unit). Please can you explain how I would go about doing an image. Would I need an external 2.5" HDD USB caddy which I then plugin to a desktop PC to do the image, then swap the HDD in the caddy and burn the image to the new one? Would this work 'straight out the box' or would any of the hardware need re-associating with the new drive (could well be a dumb question!).

Thanks everyone for the input
 
As the disk is working (but just full) the easiest way is to:

  • Attach old disk to another PC
  • Run image program on PC and create an image file
  • Attach new disk (which is bigger) to PC
  • Restore image file to new disk
  • Insert new disk in laptop
  • Reboot

You won't need to reinstall anything as none of the hardware has changed. That should be it (I know those are famous last words, but I have done exactly that with a drive from a laptop using Drive Snapshot). Drive Snapshot has a 30 day trial period, so if you only wanted to do that operation, it would be possible for free.

Have to say I use Drive Snapshot as a key part of my backup strategy though, so I have a full version here... Have a look around: http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/index.htm
 
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