Replacing notebook SATA hard disk with SSD without reinstalling
- by Graeme Donaldson
So there's a notebook (Lenovo Thinkpad Z61m) with a SATA hard disk, the SATA controller is configured for native AHCI operation & the OS is Windows XP. The hard disk is going to be replaced with an SSD which is larger.
I have an idea of how I'm going to do this, but I want to be sure there isn't something obvious I'm missing.
Connect external USB drive
Boot some flavour of Linux live CD
Use dd to clone the SATA disk to the external drive
Power off and replace the SATA disk with the SSD
Boot the live CD
Use dd to clone back from the external drive to the SSD
Does anyone have anything to add?