Cloning Desktop HD to image and use on laptop?
Community Forums/General Help/Cloning Desktop HD to image and use on laptop?
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| I get my laptop on Monday. I have a lot installed on my desktop, all apps etc. Now knowing about hardware, how could I clone my Desktop Hard Disk and use the image file on my laptop? I have Paragon HD Manager which has a utility that does the same as Norton Ghost, not as good but does the job, and I need to know if it's possible when all the different hardware is in play. I will have a new Vista Key that i get with my Laptop so changing the product key is not problem. You can do that within Vista anyway. The thing is will I open up a world of hurt for myself by trying to use my desktop ghost image on my laptop as the main OS and software? Wouldn't Vista just detect all the new hardware and do what it does i.e. uninstall and and install automatically the new hardware it finds? The reason I would rather not install anything again is that I have Unity Pro, Nero, and various other software that is already activated. I only get 2 activations with Unity Pro and both those are taken up. I'd rather not have to deal with sending of support requests to the Unity Devs to reset my activations. You only get so many. That's one of the main reason. The other is everything I own, tools and coding apps etc are already installed and it'll be a mission to install it all again. |
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| Now knowing about hardware, how could I clone my Desktop Hard Disk and use the image file on my laptop? - If you have radically different non-standard components in both PC's, you may need to install or copy the drivers first into windows drivers folder, so it will have the ncessary info to auto-detect. (For example: the laptop may have SATA and the PC may use IDE. Not all SATA controllers are auto-detected by Windows, so this would be a showstopper if you don't already have the drivers on there) - You'd need to make sure to run SysPrep first (downloadable from the microsoft website) -- it puts it in a somewhat hardware neutral state, which makes the chances of it working on another PC much higher will have a new Vista Key that i get with my Laptop so changing the product key is not problem. Actually, there's a good chance that it will be a problem: There is a difference between OEM and Retail windows keys. OEM keys will only work with OEM media/installs, not retail installes. If you purchased Vista seperately and installed it on the PC, it will NOT work with the key printed on your laptop. If you got Vista pre-installed on the PC then it may work to clone it. Now, one other potential issue: I have never used Paragon HD Manager so I have no idea of its capabilities, but know this: If the program is not specifically vista-aware, it may not be able to port the vista partition over and still be bootable. (I know that Norton ghost 2003 for example, won't result in a bootable Vista system after cloning) In this case, you may need to put in the Vista disk after the cloning, and tell it to fix the boot problem, possibly twice in a row. |
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| The thing is will I open up a world of hurt for myself by trying to use my desktop ghost image on my laptop as the main OS and software? In short Yes, if you don't know what you are doing. One of the first things to do is to create a system restore disk for the laptop with the system restore tools that the manufacturer supplies pre-installed on the machine. As trying to do what you are thinking of will totally trash the hard drive partition table and make it completely un-recoverable by any other means. If you don't do this it will cost you an arm and a leg to get a recovery disk from the manufacturer. You will also need an original Microsoft Vista install disk to sort out the boot sector and partition size. There's a tool called systemprep that removes machine-specific information from it such as security identifiers (SIDs), the contents of event logs, any system restore points, installed Plug and Play drivers, and so on. Read the articals found here about deploying Vista on multiple computers. Wouldn't Vista just detect all the new hardware and do what it does i.e. uninstall and and install automatically the new hardware it finds? All the hardware will be detected, but wont be recognized if you don't have the hardware drivers already installed and as many laptop manufactures customize the drivers for their laptops and support can be a hit and miss afair ( this means that you may not be able to get them or they only half work ) And xlsior beat me to it about the difference between OEM/Retail Versions |
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