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Swapping/cloning hard drive question


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#1
jrsummersill1

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Unfortunately, my dog knocked my laptop off of my bedside stand and it will not boot up; however, I was able to remove the hard drive and attach it to a desktop and access all of my files. My question is if I bought another hard drive exactly like the other one, would there be any problems with me cloning it since the old one does not boot up? If it's doable, does anyone have any tips on cloning hard drives? I don't have an operating system disk, so I am hoping I wouldn't need one. I am fairly good with computers, but this is new to me and I don't want to buy another hard drive if it's going to be a waste of time.

 

If it helps any, I ran the internal diagnostic tests and the short test (dst, I think it's called) failed.

 

Thanks in advance for any info!


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#2
SleepyDude

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Hi,

 

What is the OS installed on the machine?

 

My experience with cloning HDD's with problems isn't good because most tools will abort the process.


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#3
jrsummersill1

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Thanks for the quick reply SleepyDude! It's windows 7.


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#4
SleepyDude

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Do you know if the machine have a Recovery Partition?

 

Post the brand and model please.


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#5
jrsummersill1

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The hard drive is a Seagate Momentus 500gb ST9500423AS. I am not sure about the recovery partition--is there a way for me to find that out?


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#6
SleepyDude

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Sorry I mean the brand and model of the machine.
 
The easy way is to boot into windows and use the Disk Manager.
 
Let's try check/fix errors on the HDD maybe it can boot after that...
 
Press the F8 key immediately after starting the computer to access the following boot menu
windows7_boot_menu.jpg

Select Repair Your Computer, access the Command Prompt and from there type:

chkdsk /R c:

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#7
jrsummersill1

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I'm back at work now, but will try your request when I get home later this afternoon. It is an HP Pavilion g6.


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#8
SleepyDude

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I'm back at work now, but will try your request when I get home later this afternoon. It is an HP Pavilion g6.

 

Ok. The Pavilion should have some program to create the Recovery DVD's, with this disks created you can replace the HDD and reinstall the machine to the factory defaults.


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#9
jrsummersill1

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I hope I'm not jumping the gun, but will I be able to restore the computer to the way it was with all of the programs, docs, etc. since I can access them by attaching the hard drive to another computer?


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#10
SleepyDude

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I hope I'm not jumping the gun, but will I be able to restore the computer to the way it was with all of the programs, docs, etc. since I can access them by attaching the hard drive to another computer?

 

Not. Accessing the HDD like that you can only save docs, photos, etc. but not the programs because they need to be reinstalled after the system restore to factory defaults.

 

If the chkdsk successfully repair the OS to the point of be able to boot, you can try to create a full image backup to an external drive, if it works then you can replace the HDD and restore the image back to the new drive.

 

If the disk is damaged badly and the backup fail then you can try to create the Recovery DVDs in the hope that the damage doesn't affect the hidden Recovery Partition


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#11
Kemasa

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It is also possible that the laptop was damaged.

 

If there is a problem with the data on the disk, then cloning it would have no effect since it would be a duplicate of what was causing problems.

 

When the hard drive is in the machine, does it attempt to boot at all?


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#12
jrsummersill1

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Sorry for the delay in responding, but I had no access to a computer last night. I get the options in the attached picture when I try to boot normally.

Attached Thumbnails

  • when it tries to boot.jpg

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#13
jrsummersill1

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Choosing either option (launch startup repair or start windows normally) gives me the following, which doesn't actually repair the computer:

Attached Thumbnails

  • 20151013_204055.jpg
  • 20151013_204230.jpg

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#14
jrsummersill1

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Lastly, I did as you suggested with the f8, chkdsk /R c: and this was the result (it is two overlapping pictures so that I could get the entire content):

Attached Thumbnails

  • after running chkdsk 1.jpg
  • after running chkdsk 2.jpg

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#15
jrsummersill1

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Eventually, towards the end of me messing with the different options given, I got the following:

Attached Thumbnails

  • 20151013_210631.jpg
  • 20151013_213243.jpg

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