Moving to a new laptop
Hi. I'm going to have to move from a defective laptop (with 2 HDs) to a new one soon and am wondering what the best method is. Should I clone the 2 HDs on the defective device to an external HD and then restore the clones to the new HDs? Can a clone be restored from an external disk to an internal disk or disks? Thank you in advance for any insight you can provide.
Jill


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Thank you for getting back to me so quickly, Steve! I don't have the new laptop yet. The sad story is that the one I have is one month old, but has "issues" with battery life. It's got to be replaced. I'm hoping to get the same one, with a fully functioning battery of course, and it would be the same model and hopefully same HD capacity.
The current laptop is an HP with an i5 processor. There is a 250 Go SSD and a 1 To secondary HD as well. Windows 10 Family fully up to date. As I said, the new one will hopefully be the twin of the one I now have, but I haven't purchased it yet as I'm waiting for the final agreement from HP regarding the exchange/reimbursement.
So if I understand you correctly, I should scrap the idea of a clone and instead do full backups of the two disks that I could then restore (using Acronis Universal Restore, I presume?) to the replacement laptop's disks. Also, if I can't get the same model with separate HDs, you're saying that I could restore the backups to a single HD on another laptop, correct?
Thanks again!
Jill
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Jill, if you will be getting a 1 for 1 replacement for the laptop, then that will make things a whole lot easier as there should be minimal differences in hardware, especially if this is being replaced under warranty by HP.
If the laptop is working but the issue is simply with battery life, then it may be a defective battery that can be replaced without touching either of the installed drives! I have replaced the battery in my own HP Omen laptop because it developed a fault that caused the battery to go from over 30% charge down to under 5% - the laptop was out of warranty.
I would recommend creating the 'Simple' version of the Acronis Rescue Media on a USB stick (2GB min / 32GB max size), then test booting the laptop from this. You can do this by doing a Windows Restart then pressing the Esc key as it starts to reboot (when the HP logo may be showing before Windows starts).
I would recommend creating the Windows PE version of the Acronis Rescue Media as described in the KB documents below.
KB 60820: Acronis True Image 2018: how to create bootable media
KB 60091: Acronis True Image 2018: how Simple bootable media creation mode works
Make a full backup (Disks & Partitions) of your two internal drives to an external USB backup drive - I would recommend doing each drive separately and naming the backup clearly.
See KB 60142: Acronis True Image 2018: how to back up entire computer
and KB 60144: Acronis True Image 2018: how to back up files or disks
If your HP laptop is similar to mine, then the SSD is an NVMe M.2 PCIe card type drive (looks like a stick of memory with the connector on the short end), whereas the 1TB HDD is a normal 2.5" SATA laptop drive.
When you send the laptop to HP (or the company doing the replacement), include a note to ask that they transfer the current disk drives to the replacement laptop if they will be returning a different laptop to you.
See KB 60131: Acronis True Image 2018: how to restore your computer with WinPE-based or WinRE-based media in case this is needed later when the laptop is returned.
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Thank you, Steve! Unfortunately, I was told today that HP won't be replacing the laptop because they're having some sort of problem. So it will be a refund, and, as I said earlier, I would really like to get the same model. It is theoretically under warranty, but apparently the battery can't be replaced and I'll have to have a new computer. So HP won't be doing the transfer for me. I'm simply waiting for HP to get back to me so as to begin the process! Thanks again, Steve, and I will let you know how it all goes.
Jill
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Jill, what is the exact HP laptop make / model you have? It sounds very strange if the battery cannot be replaced unless it is one of the ultra thin notebook type models where they glue the battery inside the case (like is done on some mobile phones & tablets).
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The tech service told me I couldn't replace the battery, but who knows? What I do know is that there isn't a button to free up the battery for replacement. It's a Pavilion 15-DK1424Nf 15" (a gaming laptop even though I don't "game"). It's got a wonderful screen and resolution!
Jill
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Jill, thanks for confirming the laptop model, it seems that this is very new and there isn't a lot of information available for it, though it is grouped into a broader range of laptops under the umbrella name of Pavilion 15-DK1000 for which it may be possible to replace the battery but attempting this would probably void your HP warranty, so best to let them refund you and then use the money to purchase a replacement of a similar HP model / specification.
See webpage: HP Pavilion Gaming 15-dk0000 Disassembly (RAM, SSD, HDD upgrade options)
The above looks very similar to the process I followed for my own HP Omen laptop when I have opened it up to replace the battery and upgrade the internal NVMe M.2 SSD & SATA HDD drives.
See webpage: HP Pavilion Gaming 15-dk1000 Laptop PC series - for the manuals for the laptop.
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I agree with you - replacing the battery myself would probably void the warranty. I'll see what they suggest when they finally get back to me. Thank you soooo much for all of your help and information. This will all help me very much!
Jill
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