Sreekumar, for about $8 you can get an adapter (CompUSA) that will let you take the laptop drive and put it in a desktop computer. For details see http://techrepublic.com.com/5102-6255-5160538.html You should be able to use Ghost or related programs to clone it to a partition in the hard drive. Or you can just drag and drop most of what you want to save from the notebook to the desktop hard drive. You should see if the W2K setup files (look for an i386 folder in the WNNT folder) are present on the notebook hd, because they will later let you reinstall the operating system on the new drive. If they are there, as insurance go into the registry and find the product key (or Belarc Advisor will find it for you) and copy it down, in case you are prompted for it when you install the OS in the new drive. You can get like a new 30GB notebook drive shipped from NewEgg for about $75. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sreekumar Kodakara" <skodak at cs.umn.edu> To: <tclug-list at mn-linux.org> Sent: Monday, October 18, 2004 3:39 PM Subject: [TCLUG] OT: Hard Disk problems in Dell Laptop > Hi, > > I have a dell laptop running Windows 2000. Lately, it seems to me that the > hard disk is being accessed too often and makes a lot of noise. At times > during boot the sytem fails to recognize the hard disk. I guess the hard > disk is in the brink of failure. I am thinking of getting a new hard disk > for this laptop. Since there is a lot of installed software in this > machine, I was wondering if there is a way to mirror this hard disk image > into some backup disk. Later when I get my new disk I can get this disk > image into my new hard disk, so that I have the exact system configuration > in my new disk. > > > Thanks for the help. > > Sreekumar > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > Help beta test TCLUG's potential new home: http://plone.mn-linux.org > Got pictures for TCLUG? Beta test http://plone.mn-linux.org/gallery > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota Help beta test TCLUG's potential new home: http://plone.mn-linux.org Got pictures for TCLUG? Beta test http://plone.mn-linux.org/gallery tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list