Hard drive Failure (laptop)

[bustONE88]

hello everyone,
I have a HP pavilion laptop (http://www.cdrom-guide.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1551747#) that when i boot up says the following:

SMART Failure predicted on Hard disk (http://www.cdrom-guide.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1551747#) 0: TOSHIBA MK8025GAS-(PM)

WARNING: IMMEDIATELY BACK UP YOUR DATA AND REPLACE YOUR HARDDISK (http://www.cdrom-guide.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1551747#) DRIVE. A FAILURE MAY BE IMMINENT.

Press F1 to continue.

Now this message pretty much sums up that i need a new harddrive (http://www.cdrom-guide.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1551747#) but how do I backup the current hard drive on to a new harddrive and do i need the same exact model harddrive as the Toshiba one? I've messed around with my PC but never with my laptop, how difficult would changing the harddrive be? Any help on this matter is greatly appreciated!

[QWERTY]

No, you don't need the exact same model. You can use another model drive or even get a larger capacity drive if you wanted. The only thing you really need to pay attention to is whether the replacement drive is IDE or SATA. You can use a program like Ghost or Acronis to image and duplicate the data on the old drive.

You also need to work out how you want to mount the old drive, duplicate it, and transfer the image to the new drive.

[bustONE88]

Kool thanks for the reply. Now my only concern I have is, how am I gonna copy my old harddrive to the new one? Don't both of them need power to copy one another? Sorry if I'm sounding really Noobish but I have never had to backup a harddrive.

[cfodder]

First things first - swapping out your old HDD will probably be just as easy (if not easier) as your desktop mate - mine involves removing a single screw and simply yanking it out :)

As far as backing up the old drive - do you actually want to make an image of the operating system / programmes etc etc? If so then you will need an imaging software like Ghost as QWERTY says above. Unless your lappie allows you to insert 2 hard drives (unusual I think) then you will most likely need an external USB enclosure and link it up to your desktop PC to do the backup. You can then swap out the old drive, put your new drive in the enclosure and restore the image to your new hard drive.

I am assuming you have access to another PC of course.....

Work quickly on the old drive though - from my experience, once you get a warning that they are about to fail, they can go pretty quickly :(

[bustONE88]

Thanks for the reply! I'll try that out and i guess i gotta buy me Norton Ghost and see how that works... Funnything is that when I use the laptop for a really long time it will crash and freeze up, but if i leave it alone for a few months without touching it, it'll just start up until it eventually crashes. Maybe it's overheating?