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larger hard drive for drive bay caddy
I would like to buy a larger hard drive for my drive bay caddy. My current hard drive is a 250GB - WD2500BEVE. I believe it is a PATA or ide ATA interface. My computer is a Precision M65.
What is the largest hard drive available? What is the best way to transfer data and install?
ejn63
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January 26th, 2010 03:00
I think you'll find the largest PATA drive is 320G - everything larger is SATA.
You can clone the existing drive using something like Acronis TrueImage or Symantec Ghost (you will need a way to connect one of the drives externally to do the job).
TheRealFireblad
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January 26th, 2010 10:00
As EJN suggests... you'll need to hook up the original drive externally.
An IDE enclosure is one way, but you can also buy multi-adapters which allow you to connect various types of device via USB - i.e. IDE +/or SATA 2.5 and 3.5" hard drives, and 5.25"/optical drives, for about the same price as an external enclosure.
The adapters are available for about £10 here in the UK (on Ebay), and if I've piqued your interest, just Google (i.e.) 'USB 2.0 - IDE/SATA Adapter' :emotion-5:
Whatever option you choose, once the old hard drive is hooked up, you can use a commercial program such as Acronis True Image to backup/image everything on it.
But there are plenty of free hard drive backup/imaging programs out there - including:
Paragon Backup & Recovery 10 Free Edition
O&O DiskImage 4 Express
HDClone
Macrium Reflect (no longer free - apparently?)
Clone MaXX
Self Image
DriveImage XML
There are many imaging and backup programs mentioned/linked to on this The Free Country page too.