replacing laptop hard drive

[mmmPeanutButter]

I got a new hard drive for my laptop (80 gig to replace 20 gig).

I am curious exactly how to replace it?

I was under the impression that I could remove the old drive and hook it up to a desktop using an adapter.  Then I would copy the drive over to the desktop hard drive.  Then attach the new drive and copy everything over.  Install new drive in laptop.

But...

I don't think that's right.  I looked on google and I came up with sites that say you need a program to back it up...  I don't know.

Has anybody done this?

(or better yet... anybody in Toronto who wants to help me out? $$)

[Harry Potter]

Go to the manufacturer's site and they'll usually have pages which show you how to remove it.
It'll most likely be a cover held in by a screw.

As for backing it up, there's the easy way:

get an external hard disk, plug it into the usb/firewire and copy everything accross.

Hard way: Take drive out, get a 2.5" ide to 3.5" ide adapter to plug it into your PC and use a ghost image program to back it up straight onto the new drive, using an adapter on the new drive as well.

Confused yet? 

[mmmPeanutButter]

Go to the manufacturer's site and they'll usually have pages which show you how to remove it.
It'll most likely be a cover held in by a screw.

As for backing it up, there's the easy way:

get an external hard disk, plug it into the usb/firewire and copy everything accross.

Yeah, sure.  I can do this.  But after I copy everything and put the new drive in, the system wont boot up cause I won't have any operating system on the new drive...  no?

[Harry Potter]

Hence the hard way. I did this once and it worked well. All the program did was to copy the drive sector for sector accross to the new one. OS and all the partitions were still there.

[Sinner]

Go to the manufacturer's site and they'll usually have pages which show you how to remove it.
It'll most likely be a cover held in by a screw.

As for backing it up, there's the easy way:

get an external hard disk, plug it into the usb/firewire and copy everything accross.

Yeah, sure.

[Harry Potter]

Go to the manufacturer's site and they'll usually have pages which show you how to remove it.
It'll most likely be a cover held in by a screw.

As for backing it up, there's the easy way:

get an external hard disk, plug it into the usb/firewire and copy everything accross.

Yeah, sure.  I can do this.  But after I copy everything and put the new drive in, the system wont boot up cause I won't have any operating system on the new drive...  no?

No, you'll have to reinstall everything...one option you can do is to ghost the image over to an external drive...replace the 20GB with the new 80GB, then use a boot disk and Ghost the old image back to the new HD...
If it's running Windows XP, you may want to run SYSPREP...the swapfile alone could create a huge Ghost image...
If you have an adapter, you could Ghost disk to disk, and save a lot of time...

I don't think we're too far from each other, so if you need help, no problem...no $$$ required...

Adapters should not be required. Just buy a 2.5" external enclosure (in Australia I can get one for $15. No power supply required) and do everything through USB. No need to open the PC that way.

[Sinner]

That's kinda what I meant by an adapter...we have them here at work somewhere...not much need for them, as we usually back machines up to the LAN...

[Havok]

Get the USB adapter. Hook the laptop drive to a desktop. Get Symantec's Ghost software. Backup the drive to an image file on your desktop hard drive. Hookup the new laptop drive to your desktop, image the file to the hard drive. It will re-size on the fly. Re-install the new laptop drive. Boot up, and enjoy a larger hard drive. Whole process should take less than an hour...