Installing a new laptop hard drive with Paragon

Do you have the machine's recovery disc?  If you do, start the computer with this inside the drive bay and it will walk you through setup.  You may have to order it from the manufacturer if you do not have it.  

Another option, which is more advanced, is you could check if the older hard drive has a separate image partition, and do an image copy of this over to the new hard drive.  Install the hard drive, and run the manufacturer's system recovery.

Oh, and Paragon may support option #2...try connecting the external with the computer and booting from the Paragon disc.  If it gives you the option to copy the recovery partition over and formatting the rest of the disc for the OS install, do that.  Then restart the computer with the external disconnected and the Paragon disc out, and try launching system recovery.

It is the free version, but it does have the restore wizard on the bad drive.

If the restore wizard will let you transfer the recovery partition from the bad drive to the new one, then do that.  Also see if it will let you format the unused space as a second partition.

I don't see my external listed as an option, I see the bad drive and I click show partitions  it shows c  with 453 gig, and system 1.4

What's the drive maker?
Seagate and WD have free clone utilities (Acronis)that will image your old drive to the new.

http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/201991en

Seagate Momentus 500g 7200

I don't see where I can connect both drives in the laptop

Get a cheap usb sata adapter,they always come in handy.

http://www.frys.com/product/7264813?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Ok, I will try that in the next 24 hrs. Thank you all,
Art

Have you created the Recovery CD yet? If not then create it - boot the machine from this CD - select Restore - point it to you backup image (hopefully you imaged entire partition or drive) and then press Apply. The restore will be done automatically.

Ok just got to this last suggestion. At the computer now

The paragon software will not start from the bad drive

Hold the phone! I found a USB to SATA 2.5 adaptor here in the house! Does that change anything?

I can restore from my external drive that I save periodically. Looks like I have the one I just did,  10/30/2011 to 10/30/2011 and 8/14/2011 to 10/19/2011

Can I restore the latest back up to my new drive via the USB SATA 2.5 adaptor? Seems like I should be able! I wait to hear back from every one

Yes, you can.

What is the status of your system? Are you in Windows with running Backup & Recovery? If yes then start it find there restore and point it as restore target to the drive which is connected via usb device.

I am in windows running the restore files advanced. It asks where to restore the files. I can browse. So I'll back down connect this new drive and start restore files again, find the drive and do it! ...I hope. From here on I promise to image. :-)

I connected the USB SATA and the computer found it. Connected the drive and it spins and the cord lights. The drive isn't listed. I'm guessing I have to add it somehow?

go into admin tools,you probably need to add a drive letter to it

In administrative tools I see  Disk 0 1.46 gB healthy active, recovery partition. C 453,67 GB NTFS, healthy boot, page file crash dump, primary partition,  10.63 GB healthy primary partition...

Then I see disk 1 my z drive that has my back up files.

CD rom

Now it does not recognize the USB. At first it said it did but it doesn't and it never showed as a drive anywhere.

Can you take screenshot of windows disk management and post i here? Also does bios see this drive when conneceted internally?

i believe you should post more info on your setup : what external devices you are using, and how you connect them

I will be near my computer again in 12 hrs. But I am recovering files from the external HD back to the C drive of the laptop. I looked like it was going to take several hours. I can't do a screen shot until I get back but my external drives is just a SATA connection docking station to my 1TB SATA drive and the USB connection to SATA for my 2.5 Seagate drive. It didn't give me any smart errors since I backed it up on the external drive.

that external hd - doe sit have it's own power ?  in many cases, laptop usb ports do not have enough power for drives
you can also use a powered usb hub like this :  http://www.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=158910

No it doesn't have it's own power. The SATA back up does. It does light up and spin tho...

Looks like the back up files went back to the C drive. Should I image now then install the hard drive? I don't have any errors

To image looks like 245 gb. I'm suspicious because the computer is actually working fine now since I backed it up and installed the recovered files.  That's all I did. I just made a recovery disk.  I guess I should put the new HD in now since I bought it.

Install the hdd and boot the machine from recovery cd of paragon and go with restore. I must work.

me too..:-))

It's just the free version of paragon and I don't see the option to make a disc. Now it's back to having the errors. I was able to make a recovery disc with windows.

When it says it will take 245 gig for the image won't it take a ton of DVD's to finish? (Sorry for the silly question but it only took 5 DVD s to do my daughter's)

I know I'm missing something here looking for how to make a CD with paragon, but I can't find it.  All it wants me to do is back it up again. I just replaced the HD in my daughter's, but I had a recovery disc and I imaged it  6 months ago so I went with it.

Another silly one, how come I can't put the new drive in and boot from my external drive where my back up is?

Look for Recovery Media Builder on the main interface of installed program. That will create the cd for you.

Found it! Made the CD, installed the HD booted from F2 to the CD formatted the drive, but now it won't find the powered SATA drive where the back up is.  ( btw, I think we are on opposite time clocks. 12 am here now)

Now I see the back up drive in the partition area but I'm trying to figure out how to import the files if that's what I'm supposed to do

open the manual - it will show you what to do :  http://www.paragon-software.com/home/br-free/download_manual.html

Well, last ditch effort with this one. I managed to totally erase my Back up HD  when I mistakenly formatted it thinking it was the new drive. so now, all I have is the new drive in the laptop and the old drive in a docking station.  The paragon software looks nothing like the manual. When I try to restore the HD I see the old drive but none of the files I click on have anything in them to transfer even tho it says 1/2 the gigs are used up on the drive.

I'm going to put the old drive back into the computer and use paragon to back it up onto the new drive via the powered docking station. Then I'm going to put the new drive into the laptop, and try to restore it from the new drive.  

The last option is I borrowed Acronis Disk director 11 Home from a friend to try. Other than that, I give up unless somebody has a suggestion.

if you only formatted  the drive, all is still there - use any of these to get it back :
http://www.pcinspector.de/file_recovery/UK/welcome.htm      pc Inspector -FREE -
      http://www.piriform.com/recuva/download/standard            FREE  -  Recuva
      http://www.stellarinfo.com/                              Stellar
http://www.runtime.org/                              GetDataBack
http://www.ontrack.com/                              Ontrack

***do NOT install anything on that drive, just connect it to a working PC with the recovery soft

Have you ever used any kind of software for backup and which important is - to restore? Download and open attached file. Double click on it and see the set of screen shots. I am using Hard Disk Manager 12 but that won't differ from your B&R Free restore version.
Now use undelete or one of those recovery tools given by nobus to restore the backup file.
restore.zip

( I took the day off work so I believe I'm on the same time schedule as you guys)

Nobus,
I will try to recover those files to my back up drive after I get my computer working. I was able to use paragon to back up from the old drive so now I have the back up files on the new drive.

Noxcho,
I have not used any other software other than windows recovery and paragon

Sorry it's almost like starting over again but I have the whole day. Here's where I am:

1 from the old drive in the computer, I used paragon to back up files to my new Seagate HD that was in a powered docking station.

2 I placed the new Seagate drive in the computer and placed the old drive in the docking station and booted with the paragon disc I made.

3 paragon free comes up and I click restore in normal mode and click back up and recovery from the main menus.

4 my options are:
Back up partition
Burn partition on cd
Restore partition
Browse
Properties

5 HD 0 NTFS my new drive has 220 GB used
HD 1 NTFS my old drive has this:
0.    D.    Primary.    NTFS.    1.5.    System.    Archive yes.    Hidden no
1.    E.    primary.    NTFS.    454 GB.    Ti105835w0o. Archive no.   Hidden no
2.     F.    Primary.    NTFS.   10.GB.    Hddrecover.    Archive   No.    Hidden. Yes

What is my next move because when I click any of my options it ask me to select archive and all of my folders are empty. I have read the manual but the folders are still empty.

I'm not going to do anything else until I hear from y'all.

To clear it up: do you want to restore the files only or entire partition? I assume that restoring the partition or HDD is better here. But it will override the HDD0.

All I want to do, ultimately, is replace the HD with the new one and put all the old software and info on the new.

Ok, trying now

You mean drive 0 the new HD marked C ?

When I select c it says to select archive. ...root dir, my computer, mounted resources d, e, f, all these files show but are empty.

This is all I have and they are empty as far as I can tell
image.jpg

You have taken the screen shot the way I do not see what behind of this screen is. Is your backup on disk 0 or on disk1?

Back up disc , the new Seagate that is in the laptop is basic hard disc 0 C:
image.jpg

Then go to My Computer or mounted disks. There you will find the external drive and its content. External Media is not a HDD.

Or simply click on HDD0 and then select Restore Wizard. It will show you C: drive as source of backup image.

What is the file name?

I get errors this image cannot be restored on the current selection which is 0 C:

Because you are trying to restore backup of hdd to parititon or vice versa. What did you image? Entire HDD or single partition?

I backed up 253 GB files from the old HD

Should the HD in the laptop be blank?

It does need to be blank. Take a screen shot of the backup folder and post it here. I want to see what structure of backp files you have.

Well I gave up on this one and loaded windows onto the new drive. I'll re post for help installing programs. Can't win every time!

The provess of restoring is very simple once you understand how it works. Even after you install new OS you will have to use backup and restore.

Going to re-post for a more direct answer