Replacing a laptop hard drive question

OK, so I have an HP Pavillion laptop, about 1 1/2 years old with 2 160 GB HDDs. The main drive is partitioned to include the OS re-installation backup on the second partition.

My goal, to replace this 160 GB drive with a 250 GB drive and not lose the second partition for the back up.

Is it possible to partition the new drive, copy the files on back up partition to the new drive and still be able to access the restore to factory settings feature if necessary? Please advise. Thank you.

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you'll need something like Acronis (should have it anyway )

LINK check around...it's almost always on sale somewhere for around $20

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Lantec is right-- Find a decent imaging utility and you will be good to go

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Great, thanks for the advise. However, considering I can make the backup partition the same size as it is now on the new drive, will the reinstallation (when ever necessary) have trouble since the main drive will be bigger than the original settings or hardware?

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Nope. I've never seen an instance when it did. The imaging software only cares there is enough space to dump the image, and the reinstallation routine shouldn't care either. The good thing though, it's a new drive, and you will have an image, so with a little time, you can test away, prove it works, then reimage back to current state. (if that makes sense)

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Acronis has several options to choose from when cloning a hard drive. Since yours has the recovery partition on it, the best way to go would be manual. Set the recovery partition to clone as is and set the normal partition to take the rest of the space.

There's an automatic setting too, but that'll grow your recovery partition, which will lose you some storage space.

Also, when you clone, set the old drive to keep the data. If something goes wrong, like a power outage or hammer attack from the soon to be ex, you'll be able to recover.

Edit - or you could image like the others say. Cloning is safer for a new drive IMO.

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