Backing up drivers?

[Harsky]

So I recently came across a 40gb laptop HDD. Not much I can do with it considering my current laptop has 160gb HDD. Then I remembered my sister has a laptop... but with only 20gb space on it. Being the nice sibling, I agreed to give her the 40gb one. Unfortunately, her laptop is fairly old and my attempt to find video/sound drivers for it is fruitless so I figured I might as well try and transfer her old HDD to the new HDD. What is the best way to do this?

 

[fischju_original]

You need to clone it, and I couldn't tell you how to do it with a laptop

 

[Mangofett]

You'll need to put the new HD in the media bay of the laptop if you're gonna clone it like fischju.

 

[Harsky]

You'll need to put the new HD in the media bay of the laptop if you're gonna clone it like fischju.

I have an enclosure for a laptop HDD which can be plugged into a USB. Can that work?

 

[Mangofett]

You'll need to put the new HD in the media bay of the laptop if you're gonna clone it like fischju.

I have an enclosure for a laptop HDD which can be plugged into a USB. Can that work?

If you're lucky. I've booted an OS from a USB drive before but it doesn't work on every computer.

 

[fischju_original]

Windows XP might work without drivers. The drivers on the disk should be enough

 

[Harsky]

Windows XP might work without drivers. The drivers on the disk should be enough

Think the laptop is so old that we lost the cds. Anyways it's a Toshiba Satellite M10

 

[fischju_original]

Just get an XP Pro Corporate torrent

 

[Harsky]

Just get an XP Pro Corporate torrent

What's different about it?

 

[fischju_original]

No activation, no serials. Has Service Pack 2. Should have enough drivers on the disk to make the laptop run fine.

 

[Qith]

Or, you could just copy the contents of you sister's 20GB HDD to your own 160GB one using the enclosure, swap the 20GB one with the 40GB one and then copy everyting on to that one. I've done this before, it almost always works (sometimes it will screw with your file permissions if you use NTFS, that sucks).
Even so, it probably is better to use a clean install using said Windows XP Pro Corporate, simply because it's sweet to have a clean install and, as fischju indicated, it probably doesn't need any manual driver updates. After you've installed, you could just copy any data you might need from the 20GB HDD to the new one using your handy enclosure (those things come in very handy when repairing laptops, you should cherish it!).