[GLLUG] Preparing an Old Laptop

Adam McDougall mcdouga9 at egr.msu.edu
Sun Jan 21 23:52:55 EST 2007


On Sun, Jan 21, 2007 at 10:23:41PM -0600, Charles Tower wrote:

  I just bought an old WinBookXL (PII, 64MB RAM) that might be difficult 
  to get running with a modern Linux, but it was cheap.  I would like to 
  back up the 2GB hard disk and it's Win2000Pro and MS Office 
  installation, so that, if I decide to resell the laptop I can offer it 
  just as it is now.  The drive is a little over half full.  It has a 
  CD-ROM, not a burner; it has a floppy drive, but I'd hate to back up 
  using that.  I hope to use a 512MB flash drive to transfer the backup to 
  another hard disk for safekeeping, but I do have a serial cable I could 
  use with DirectConnect or whatever they call that LapLink wannabe.  Do 
  any of you know of free tools that would allow me to restore the hard 
  disk to its current condition, able to boot Win2000Pro and run MS 
  Office, after a complete reformatting?  Being able to create back-up 
  files no larger than 500MB would be pretty handy, too.

You can also obtain an adapter to convert from laptop HD to a 
standard 40 pin IDE connector.  I bought one for around $6 at compusa.
You have to be careful to keep track of which end is pin 1 so you
don't hook the drive up backwards and fry it.  Otherwise if you 
can get the hard drive out and into another computer with little 
physical trouble, it should be the fastest and most reliable way to
back up the install and restore it.  I would use dd and make an image
of the HD so you get boot loader, partition table, and all in one shot,
assuming the HD will not die before you replace it.  If an exact image
isn't best, you probably want to make a ghost image. 

  
  Another question I have concerns hard drives for laptops.  Are they 
  standard, so that I could easily get a replacement, and just swap them 
  out rather than back up what I have?

I'd say 99.5% of laptop drives I know of are 2.5" IDE.  Some recent laptops
in the last year or so may be SATA, and I have seen one laptop that had a 
smaller than usual hard drive with connectors on the long side instead of
the end.  



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