I reached capacity on my 220 gb hard drive. Got a 750 gb drive, copied my old one to it via acronis and replaced the old drive. Turned on laptop and got Dell diagnostics. When I exit diagnostics screen goes black,Dell page comes up and diagnostics comes right back. Even ran diagnostics but still can't get past it. What to do?

Transfer an Operating System to a New Hard Drive

When replacing an old hard drive, a process known as cloning is the easiest and most thorough method for transferring data between the old and new hard drives.

A cloning utility takes a snapshot of your current hard drive and then re-creates that snapshot on your new hard drive.

The process clones everything, including the operating system, installed applications, settings and personal files.

Create a system restore disk so that you can return your system to its previous condition if an error occurs.

You can use a backup and restore utility provided with your operating system, or find one for free or for purchase on the Internet.

Many cloning utilities can also create system restore disks.

Shut down the computer and remove power.

Physically install the new hard drive.

Restore power and boot up the computer.

Ensure that your operating system recognizes that the new hard drive has been installed.

Pick the cloning utility that works best for you. (See Below for some options.)

http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy

http://www.clonezilla.org/

http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm

All freeware

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage

http://www.symantec.com/norton/ghost

Purchase

Base your decision on your operating system and the cost and complexity of the utility.

Install and launch the cloning utility on your old hard drive.

Follow the instructions included with the cloning utility.

Keep the old hard drive as a backup, or reformat it for additional storage space.

Cloning a Notebook Hard Drive

Create a system restore disk so that you can return your system to its previous condition if an error occurs.

You can use a backup and restore utility provided with your operating system, or find one for free or for purchase on the Internet.

Many cloning utilities can also create system restore disks.

Pick the cloning utility that best fits your needs. (See Above for some options.)

Base your decision on your operating system, the cost and complexity of the utility, and whether the utility can clone notebook hard drives using bootable media, such as CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs or flash drives.

Install and launch the cloning utility on your old hard drive.

Follow the instructions included with the cloning utility.

Keep the old drive as a backup in case the new hard drive fails.

or
Copy an OS to Another Hard Drive

Copying an OS or operating system to another hard drive can serve several functions.

Some simply want to move their current operating environment to a new PC, while others are replacing an old system hard drive with a newer one and want to avoid the hassle of updating and reinstalling.

The process of copying your operating system to another hard drive is a very easy one, in fact, and can be accomplished by anyone with nothing more than some software and some time.

Install Acronis True Image and launch it from its installation icon.

A link is provided below for the Acronis free 15-day trial.

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/download/trueimage/

http://www.feyrer.de/g4u/

Support free software or g4u WILL die!

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.asp

Macrium has a free also pay options

Click the "Utilities" button from the left menu bar.

Click the "Clone Disk" button from the right pane of the main program window.

This will cause a dialog box to appear.

Click the "Next" button on the bottom-right corner of the dialog box.

Select the disk with the operating system you wish to copy from the drive list and click the "Next" button.

This will begin an examination of your hard disk that will finish in a few minutes.

Select the destination disk from the hard drive list and click the "Next" button.

Choose the "As-is" option for how you would like to handle your partitions.

This option merely lets you decide whether to keep all partitions on the drive or copy just the data onto one blank partition on the new drive.

Click the "Finish" button, and Acronis will prompt you that your system needs to be restarted to begin the cloning process.

The restart will happen automatically when you click the "Finish" button.

Allow the computer to restart, and Acronis will launch prior to the operating system and begin the cloning procedure.

This process may take several minutes to several hours, depending on the size of the operating system and whether there are any installed applications.

Restart you computer once again after Acronis has completed the cloning procedure.

The software will notify you when the cloning has finished.

Boot into your operating system and use your new operating system installation as normal. You may now remove your old operating system drive or format it as you desire.

Hope this helps.

All you have to do is open the window for the external drive and click and drag the folders that you want to copy. Always put files in folders or the drive will say it's full before it is.

You cannot. You delete both and then make one partition.
There is software available that will let you resize a partition. (E.g. Acronis Disk Director). In this case you delete one partition and the resize the remaining partition to use the space created.
Most important: Back your data up to another hard disk before making any changes to your disk.

If this helps please vote for my solution.

1. try formatting
2. use acronis software
3. 
   

It has most probably just reached its "end of life". Several years for a hard drive reading and writing is a good track record.
You can probably take the casing apart and replace the hard drive. Just make sure that this is an USB 2.0 interface before spending the money.

Hi,

Dows your DVD player supports reading drives of 1 TB capacity?

Check if the drive works on a computer!

if you want you can try using acronis. its fairly simple and can handle your transition to the larger drive. are you upgrading to vista ultimate?

to handle the clone, download the acronis and it has a trial 15 day version. have a usb to sata connector available, you can pick this up for about 20 dollars at most computer places. turn on your computer normally and attach the new drive to the usb connector and let it load up in device manager. then from there load your acronis, in acronis select the tools/utilities and select clone hard drive, leave everything standard and it will start the process, it will ask you to reboot and from there clone your existing hard drive as is only on a larger partition size now. if you are comfortable with acronis you can change partition sizes if you like to suit you. what kind of problems are you having with vista ultimate?

yeah you need to replace the old hard disk to new IDE 120GB hard disk.

You can get a 500-750 GB drive for around $60-80

Check online for better prices than off the shelf

Hi scotti0619,

The answer to this question is spelled out by the manufacturer, Western Digital, at http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=615&p_created=1034613413&p_sid=coT55l9j&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9MzEsMzEmcF9wcm9kcz0yMjgsMjA5LDIyMiZwX2NhdHM9JnBfcHY9My4yMjImcF9jdj0mcF9zZWFyY2hfdHlwZT1hbnN3ZXJzLnNlYXJjaF9mbmwmcF9wYWdlPTEmcF9zZWFyY2hfdGV4dD1mb3JtYXR0ZWQgY2FwYWNpdHk*&p_li=&p_topview=1.

The capacity you are seeing is alcuatlly measured in a binary (base 2) system rather than the simplistic base 10 system of 1 GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes. In binary measurement, 1 GB = 1,073,724,841 bytes. Thus, 750 GB in base 10 = 698.47 GB in base 2. You are likely getting the full capacity from your drive, but it is simply being looked at on a different scale.

Thank you,
Jason,
Go Ahead. Use Us.