Need advice on cloning a drive

[wdrzal]

My neighbor has a HP touchsmart 300 desk pc with windows 7. He's getting a message :"Hard drive failure imminent".

It's a sata drive but the form factor of the pc has only one hd drive bay and the OS and files are all on the failing HD. It's still operational as of now.

What is the easiest way + best software /cables /method needed to clone this drive.

Below is a link to a HD I'm considering for replacment and a scan of the failing HD(I had it out)



http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822145532

[WangChung]

Even though he only has 1 HDD bay, does he have more than one SATA port? If so then you can just hook up the new HDD with the cables temporarily out for the data xfer. If you use Ultimate Boot CD (installable onto USB), you should be able to get into gparted and clone the partition.

[wdrzal]

Even though he only has 1 HDD bay, does he have more than one SATA port? If so then you can just hook up the new HDD with the cables temporarily out for the data xfer. If you use Ultimate Boot CD (installable onto USB), you should be able to get into gparted and clone the partition.

I didn't think to look for a second sata port on the MB. I asumed the form factor was designed to be compact so no need for a extra sata port. I'll take a look tomorrow. But I didn't see any master/slave in the bios.

Thanks for the idea!!!

Would I be able to buy the new internal hard drive ,then buy a external hard drive case with a usb connection then clone the existing HD to the new HD in the external case. Once complete just remove the drive from the external case and install it internally?????

Sounds to easy!