Need software recommendations please (also need help with acronis) (URGENT: HELP NEEDED) New question inside.

[1992Chevy K1500]

I'm about to order a new HDD for my laptop and need some help. I need some software that will allow me to copy my original OS (Vista) over to the new laptop drive. I know they make some, but I'm not sure where to find it. I don't want to pay $900-1000-1100+ for it. I also don't want to copy the entire drive, just the necessary parts of the OS (the basics needed to run it). Does anyone know where to find some?

Edited October 14, 2009 by 1992Chevy K1500

[1992Chevy K1500]

Anyone? My HDD is working (just barely, can't do much, but it turns on at least).

[bobonit]

Get acronis true image. Works awesome. Do yourself a favor, get an IDE/SATA to USB adapter and you can connect the new drive to the laptops usb port, image the old drive to the new drive, then just take out the old one, put in the new one. DONE. If you need links I can find them.

[1992Chevy K1500]

I'll try to look them up. Yeah, the external adapter on my favorites. I'm looking at some more memory for my comp right now (1 Gb is no longer enough). Thanks for the info.

If anyone else would like to chime in, I'll listen.

[xl_neomax_lx]

Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost.

[domllama]

You can go the Acronis route (which will make an image of EVERYTHING) Or if you only need certain things you can make a backup using the FREE windows backup (which is good enough in most cases) that will get most of the import stuff off like my documents, desktop etc. IN VISTA THIS IS....

START>ALL PROGRAMS>ACCESSORIES>SYSTEM TOOLS>>BACKUP STATUS AND CONFIGURATION

Save this .bak file to an external drive and reinstall your OS (or better Win7) and then run the backup utility and instead of performing a backup -> perform a restore from the .bak file. Going this route you will need to reinstall apps etc, the acronis route you won't have to do this - but in the same instance have to pay for the license.

[1992Chevy K1500]

OK, so I partitioned the drive like I wanted it (googled the info and finally found what I needed). So, how would I go about creating a bootable backup of my current drive? I would like to clean it up a little if possible (not sure if Acronis can do that) but I'll search the help section for it.

Edited October 13, 2009 by 1992Chevy K1500

[1992Chevy K1500]

Anyone? Seriously, I've never used Acronis and am not sure how to create a bootable backup. And google is no help at all (at least in this area).

[-Hobby-]

If its like some of the software I have used you want to create a disk image. That should be a bit by bit image of your current disk.

If you have created the partition you will also have to format the partition before writing to it. With the software your using it may or may not do all of this for you. Wish I could help you out with the software but I have never seen or used it.

Edited October 13, 2009 by HobbyWerks

[1992Chevy K1500]

I'm waiting on it to format now. I forgot about that at first, but I'm still unsure of how to do it. Acronis has an option to backup the entire diske (unallocated space and all) but it backs it up as a ".tib" file, and I'm unsure if that's a bootable file. The "create bootable media" option won't allow me to back up to the partition on the drive (it may be because it was unformatted, so I'll try that again).