Restore Windows 7 Image onto a different laptop?

6329 Views 12 Replies 5 Participants Last post by Daifne, Apr 3, 2011

tim19889

Discussion Starter · Mar 31, 2011

Hi guys, I think I already know the answer to this but just want to double check before I go buy another copy of Windows 7 64 bit home premium. Here's the situation. My dad's hard drive on his toshiba satellite p505 s8980 is dying, it has trouble booting and is extremely slow when it loads Windows. Also, a message pops up as soon as you restart it saying that hard drive failure is imminent and to back up all your data. I got off all his documents and pictures and other personal stuff, and we ordered a new hard drive for the laptop, but the thing is his laptop did not come with a windows 7 disc to reinstall windows or a recovery partition to reinstall it from. So if/when his current hard drive fails we are going to need to get a new copy of windows 7. Is it possible to make an image of my laptop (we both have the same Windows 7 edition and type) and install it on his new hard drive? Or is it going to say when I try to restore my laptop's image on his computer, "we're sorry, windows cannot restore the image on this machine. please run the restore operation on the original machine" or some such thing?

Oh, and I already tried making an image from his machine. It gets to about 80% and then says there was an error on the hard drive and it cannot continue

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Wand3r3r

· #2 · Mar 31, 2011

unless your laptop is exactly the same the image won't boot/come up correctly due to wrong device drivers.

backup the laptops data
run chkdsk /r on the drive
try making your image again.

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Isaac DFW IT

· #3 · Mar 31, 2011

instead of buying a fresh copy of windows 7 i believe you can contact toshiba and order a recovery disk for about 20$

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tim19889

Discussion Starter · #4 · Mar 31, 2011

Thanks for your help. I already did run chkdsk last night with both the /f and /r switches and tried the backup again this morning with no better luck. Our hardware and laptops are different (I have an asus) so I guess if his HDD totally fails we will have to get another windows dvd then. If we did have the same laptops tho and we made an image of mine, there would be nothing built into windows tho that would stop me from installing that image onto his? I thought windows would be on top of that and only let you install windows on one computer. Not the case though?

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tim19889

Discussion Starter · #5 · Apr 1, 2011

Isaac DFW IT said:
instead of buying a fresh copy of windows 7 i believe you can contact toshiba and order a recovery disk for about 20$

Awesome! Thanks that's a great idea I didn't think about that. That's most likely what we'll try to do then...

Btw do you think it would be worthwhile trying to make an image with WAIK and ImageX? I learned how to do it in my studying for the MCTS: Configuring Windows 7 certification. Do you think it's worth trying or I'll probably get the same type of error?

Also, would it theoretically be possible to make an image of my hard drive, add the drivers necessary for my dad's laptop to work on to that image, and then load the image onto dad's laptop and install the drivers he needs? I'm not really considering doing this just wondering if it would be a possibility or not?

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Isaac DFW IT

· #6 · Apr 1, 2011

imagex What is ImageX? looks like its still requires you to have the same hardware between the source and destination

but what you are suggesting is interesting... Im not sure If it'd be possible

could u try using imagex to make an image from the computer thats going bad?

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Daifne

· #7 · Apr 1, 2011

With a failing hard drive, cloning or imaging and replacing isn't the best idea. If you can image it, you can use that image to get the files you want, but I wouldn't use it to recover the OS and other programs to a new drive. Better to just get the discs from Toshiba. If I remember right, they could be less than $20.

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altjx

· #8 · Apr 1, 2011 (Edited)

tim19889 said:
Awesome! Thanks that's a great idea I didn't think about that. That's most likely what we'll try to do then...

Btw do you think it would be worthwhile trying to make an image with WAIK and ImageX? I learned how to do it in my studying for the MCTS: Configuring Windows 7 certification. Do you think it's worth trying or I'll probably get the same type of error?

Also, would it theoretically be possible to make an image of my hard drive, add the drivers necessary for my dad's laptop to work on to that image, and then load the image onto dad's laptop and install the drivers he needs? I'm not really considering doing this just wondering if it would be a possibility or not?

Nice man. I just passed my MCTS: Windows 7, Configuring (70-680) yesterday with a 918 after the third attempt. Wishing you well on the exam, it's tough

Since your laptop has Windows 7 and you just need to put Windows 7 on the new hard drive, the best thing to do would be to first capture an image of your machine without sysprepping. This way after you DO sysprep and capture the image, you can re-apply the first image and revert your machine back to normal without entering Windows Welcome. Apply the sysprep'd image to his new hard drive. Make sure you apply the sysprep'd image to his machine, otherwise you'll get BSOD issues.

After that, if you can, attach his old HD to another IDE/SATA cable if available and transfer data back & forth.

OR

Do as the others say. In some cases the manufacturer will ship you a new recovery disc for free, and they'll charge you if you lose it and need it again afterwards.

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Daifne

· #9 · Apr 1, 2011

Again, with a failing drive, imaging to the new drive from the old drive isn't the best idea. The bad sectors can cause problems on the new drive's install. Not fatal to the drive, but quite problematic to the OS.

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altjx

· #10 · Apr 1, 2011

Diafne said:
Again, with a failing drive, imaging to the new drive from the old drive isn't the best idea. The bad sectors can cause problems on the new drive's install. Not fatal to the drive, but quite problematic to the OS.

If the guy has a personal laptop himself (not his dad's old or new hard drive), capturing and applying image should work fine.

Sent from my iPhone using Tech Help

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Daifne

· #11 · Apr 1, 2011

Not when his laptop is an Asus and his father's is a Gateway. Different components/different drivers. Imaging his to apply to his father's will cause numerous problems. If they both had the exact same laptop with the exact same configuration, then, yes, it would work, but his father's data and personally installed programs would not be there. His data and programs would be instead.

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tim19889

Discussion Starter · #12 · Apr 2, 2011

He ordered the reecovery disc yesterday so we will be set when/if his current hdd totally fails. They only charged $20 plus $7 to ship to which I thought was pretty good.

@Diafne: I know you I can't make an image of my laptop's hdd and install it on my dad's because the drivers would be wrong. What I was wondering though is if you could use the Windows WAIK or some other progran to add the proper drivers to the system image for dad's laptop? Like I said, I'm not going to do this, but am just curious if its possible.

@Isaac: I could try to use imagex but after thinking about it I think I'd probably just get the same/same type of error message with that. If part of the HDD is corrupted and unreadable, changing what program and/or method you use to back it up is not going to make a difference.

@altjx: Yeah I am kind of scared about this test lol. It is my first one from microsoft Imll be taking :/. How hard is it compared to Comptia's A+ and Network+ would you say? I did pretty well on them thankfully. Also, what areas would you recommend I spend the most time studying? I know you can't get into specifics but from a scale of 1-10 how important is it to know all the different commandline tools/parameters/scripts/switches etc...?

Thanks for your help again everybody

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Daifne

· #13 · Apr 3, 2011

Hi Tim,

It would copy over, but it may or may not work. Sorry to be vague, but the different components and different drivers could cause lots of problems or just a few. It depends on what was used to build each machine. You would also have licensing issues. The Windows key for the Asus would not be valid on the Gateway. Gateways can be very picky about the keys and Windows install. I tried a general OEM disk on a Gateway a while back that threw some unusual errors when entering the key. The Gateway recovery discs are your best bet.

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