Windows 7: Transfer to new hard drive

How can I transfer my files (or everything for that matter) from my old Toshiba, came with computer, hard drive to a new Seagate Momentus drive?

Hi cclloyd9785,

Can you please clarify exactly what you want to do? Your "old Toshiba" - is that the one with Windows 7 on it, as your System Specs indicate? What do you mean by "came with computer"? Sorry for misunderstanding...

Cheers,

Walker
Windows Outreach Team

Well its a laptop. It came with an internal 5400 RPM 250 GB internal hard drive. I want to double up to a 500 GB 7200 RPM internal drive.

you will need to create a cloned image of the drive

This will be a difficult thing to do mainly because it's a laptop.

Acronis, Paragon and others provide software that can clone one drive onto a new drive but this would normally require access to both drives simultaneously.

It may be possible to clone the old drive to the new one if you can fit the new drive into an external enclosure, then swap the drives after cloning, or if you have access to an external drive this may be used as a temporary store - clone existing drive to external - swap old and new drives - clone external copy to new drive

creating a disk image may work as well but im not certain as i've never actually had to install it that way.

Why not just copy your important files over to your 1.5TB external hd, swap the internals, install Windows 7, and replace said important files?

Cheers,

Walker
Windows Outreach Team

I was thinking. Couldnt i just clone the drive, then do an upgrade install to my same OS, and then reactivate it so it will install the drivers?