Copying the contents of a laptop hard disk

In the old days you could just copy the directory and job done Contrarian but nowadays there's registry entries and such cr@p. Any time I've done it I've had to reinstall. I don't know if copying your registry entries over will make it work or maybe using the windows easy transfer (on the Accessories menu) will do the job.

Cheers Feck. There is software available to facilitate the process, but I think the problem might be that if I have programs on my old PC for which I don't have the product key, then these won't work on the new one.

There are plenty of programs out there that'll extract the product key/serial for you and the installation programs are generally all downloaded rather than on disks these days. Have a look on google for product key finders, here's a list of free ones http://pcsupport.about.com/od/productkeysactivation/tp/topkeyfinder.htm

Thanks Ghetto Joe.

One way to do this is to clone the original disc complete with operating system and put it into a second laptop as a secondary drive. Go into safe mode when booting the cloned disc for the first time in order to delete graphics / sound etc.. drivers. On reboot plug and play will start installing graphics / sound etc.. drivers or at least looking for drivers to install on to your cloned disc. Provided the original laptop hard disc is still in the laptop then this won't be an issue because the system will find what it's looking for no problems. I have recently done this myself so I know it works 100%.

disk cloning is the right starting point assuming the disk you are cloning contains the operating system, as product verification will be muddled in with the registry.

as genelec intimates, the problem with a full clone of a primary boot disk to a different piece of hardware though is that you drag the wrong drivers overs.

make note of the target laptops drivers and then give it a go.

DStyle,

The two laptops involved are identical in hardware terms, so there shouldn't be a problem with driver incompatibility.

How do I actually carry out the disk cloning though? Do I need some external storage device/hard disk?

BTW, thanks for the tip on SSDs. I've now got one fitted to my main desktop PC, and it's even faster!

Only reason I'd avoid doing a clone is that you bring forward any crap you had on the old PC , sometimes it's nice to start with a clean slate and just install what you need.

But if you do want to clone you can just do a backup image of the old PC then restore the new PC using that back up image. You'd need some external storage device or DVD's for the back up image. There's plenty of how to's on the net for restoring from a back up image, most PC's prompt you to make a back up when you first buy them.

Windows easy file transfer is included in win 7 if you just want to shift files and settings from one pc to another, ie all your emails and settings or just pictures etc

http://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live.php

Follow the instructions

Cheers genelec.

If you clone a hard drive you'll have two laptops using the same windows license.
This won't cause a problem immediately but the windows license COA serial number will have to be amended.