Re: E 1405 questions

On Fri, 21 Mar 2008 11:37:42 -0500, Journey <journey@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Fri, 21 Mar 2008 07:03:38 -0500, RnR <rnrtexas@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:45:05 -0500, RnR <rnrtexas@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Thu, 20 Mar 2008 22:41:19 -0500, RnR <rnrtexas@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Got a few questions regarding E1405 and upgrading its hard drive.

I believe my bios supports usb devices? If I'm correct, can I make it
boot from an external usb hard drive? Now, if all this is correct,
what is the best software to image the old drive to an external usb
hard drive and then reboot from the external drive and move the image
back on to the new internal hard drive? I read that if I use Acronis
TrueImage, I would have to make a bootable CD with the image on the
external drive to use when I reboot the E1405. I guess I'm hoping to
eliminate the CD and just boot from the ext. hard drive.

Any ideas or suggestions ?


Maybe I found my answer....
http://www.infopackets.com/channels/en/windows/gazette/2006/20060217_use_external_hard_drive_to_boot_windows_incase_c_drive_crashes.htm

Does this make sense?


Well looks like Acronis TrueImage (version 10 in my case) worked. I
did a "disk clone" from TI and it did clone my laptop drive (all
partitions) to the usb external hard drive. Tho the drive sizes were
different, TI took care of this (in auto mode for disk cloning). I
then told my laptop in the bios to boot first from a USB device and
proceeded to let it boot from the external drive (tho my old laptop
drive was still connected internally). Of course after it booted up
(a bit sluggish I might add) and after telling me at first "no usb
device or sector was found" (or similar wording) the question arose in
my mind from which drive did the boot up really occur from? So I
went into the disk management and checked all the partitions/drives
and saw that indeed the external drive had the only "active" partition
tho my internal drive had a "system" partition on it. Inotherwords
the active drive is that from which my laptop really booted up from so
case solved. Now when the new drive comes in, I'll pop it in, reboot
from the external drive, perform another disk clone from within TI and
tell TI to clone from the old drive (now the external) to the new
drive (now the internal) and hopefully I'll be able to reboot next
from the new internal drive if all goes well (with fingers crossed).

ps-- I just detailed this method for the benefit of Google and
future references to how to boot from the usb external drive (dell
E1405 laptop and winxp) and the method I chose to clone the old drive
to the new drive (essentially old drive to external drive to new
drive).

Thanks for detailing it for the benefit of future searches. I try to
do that too.

In a few cases I had posted details but then forgot about them. Later,
I did a Google search to see if I could find answers, and there just
happened to be a perfect match of someone having the same issue. In
fact, it was amazing how perfectly similar our issues are.

Then I find out that I am actually reading my own post as well as the
resolution of whatever question I had.


I'm not 100% correct and will have to edit my original post as to the
details because I found out that when I actually took the old drive
out and put the new one in, the external drive did not load as it did
before even tho it showed the active drive as being on the external
drive the first time. Apparently it must take something off the old
drive inorder to boot up (mbr??) and I will have to find out what
gives so stay tuned for a revision to what I thought was correct. My
guess is now I'll have to use a cd to assist in the bootup of the
external drive but I'm not sure yet. If anyone else wants to
add/revise/expand on my post, please do so as I'm still in learning
mode here. thanks and stay tuned.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: E 1405 questions
    ... I believe my bios supports usb devices? ... eliminate the CD and just boot from the ext. hard drive. ... did a "disk clone" from TI and it did clone my laptop drive (all ... partitions) to the usb external hard drive. ...
    (alt.sys.pc-clone.dell)
  • Re: Anonymizer tool like Tor?
    ... Buy a used laptop from a garage sale with cash. ... Put the decryption key on a USB stick and leave it at a secure ... Boot the system with the USB ...
    (freebsd-questions)
  • Re: installing xp
    ... card, USB connection or ...) ... i am trying to rest my laptop with the reset disc ... > it to boot from the reset cd. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics)
  • Re: soundcard SoundBlaster PCI128 or SoundBlaster live1024 problem
    ... > What messages are you getting from boot log and dmesg? ... ACPI tables contain no PCI IRQ routing entries ... RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 64000K size 1024 blocksize ... USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver v2.2 ...
    (comp.os.linux.hardware)
  • Re: Where can I find a rescue/emergency cd for booting an XP laptop?
    ... Perhaps I could make a BartPE CD on my laptop, and use it to boot hers? ... Then copy her data folders over to the usb drive (hook it up to her ... version of XP whilst Knoppix is a self booting linux CD. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)