How do I copy from one laptop drive to another?

Sorry, got another question !

I've used drive image to copy my laptop hdd onto a PC hdd. I want to transfer this image onto a new laptop hdd. The new laptop hdd has nothing on it. So I've got my 3 hard drives (2 laptop and 1 pc hdd) and have just realised that I dont know what to do next !

Do I:

1. Connect my laptop to my pc via usb ?

or

2.Can I make an image of my laptop hdd on a cd/dvd and use that to burn onto my drive (dont know what I'm talking about !)

Or, is there any other option ???

you can (when creating an image) specify in Drive Image to span the images to a maximum size (say 4Gb) and do that, or you could boot from your Drive Image recovery CD in your laptop, then point it at the image shared from your PC and restore the image across your network.

Can I make a drive image recovery cd and then stick that into my laptop and copy from the cd straight onto the new hdd ?

also would the process be easier us Acronis True Image (as I have that too)

Plz be patient with me, I'm still quite new at all this !

I'd use True Image, but that's just because it's a far superior product. You should be able to simply restore the image file onto the new hard drive attached to the PC.

Ok, I think I've confused you.

• I have a laptop and a PC
• I have 3 hdds (400GB PC hdd, 60GB latop hdd and 160GB laptop hdd).
• I have Windows Media Center Edition installed on my 60GB laptop hdd. I had wanted to copy the drive straight onto the 160GB laptop hdd, but I cant think of any way to do it.
• Because I couldn't think of any way to copy my 60GB laptop hdd to my 160GB laptop hdd, I copied the 60GB hdd to my 400GB PC hdd.
• I then stopped and thought, "Oh ****." because I realised that I had forgotten about HOW I was going to copy my PC 400GB hdd to the new 160GB hdd.

That 10,000 word essay above is my problem.

Ah - you've imaged the 400Gb desktop hard drive with the image of your 60Gb lappy drive? Do you still have the original 60Gb laptop drive? if so put it back into your laptop, then use true Image to create an image file and place it somewhere on your desktop drive. Once that's done put the 160Gb drive in your laptop and boot from the True Image recovery CD and recover the image that you just made onto the 160Gb drive - make sense?

alternatively, get a 2.5 to 3.5 adapter, plug your laptop drive into your PC and then image it back on, then put 2.5 laptop drive back in new laptop, job done.

@ Splash

• So I place an image of my 60GB hdd onto my PC 400GB hdd ?
• What exactly is a recovery disk ?
• How will the image on the 400GB come into play ?

If you're using acronis - which sounds likely with the true image mentioned it's simple.

If you're not and you're struggling - I would recommend it for making life so simple...

Put original disk back in PC. Put new disk in a USB carrier and plug into laptop (or ordinary IDE were it a desktop).

take the option to clone the image onto a new disk.

Put new disk into PC - you're done

Not 100% about this, but isn't there a way of booting the laptop from an Acronis Boot CD and then restoring the old disk image that has been saved to CD using Acronis?

yes that's certainly what the documentation says.

I also back my laptop off onto a diskstation using that technique.

I have succesfully recovered individual files that way.

I usually prefer to do a rebuild from scratch so I can control what goes on - most of my windows installations collect so much sludge..

I haven't tried it a full recovery, so I too would like to know if it succeeds - just in case one day I need it!