The Vaio’s original HDD crashed in-warranty many years ago and was replaced with a Hitachi HDS722525VLAT80. It has gotten VERY slow recently, and I think I can hear the heads beating against the case (definitely loud clacks from that drive). During POST, the SMART status shows BAD and I have to go thru BIOS (no changes) to get it to boot. A few days ago, it stopped listing the Hitachi as a drive, so I had to unplug every other drive & card reader to get it back on the boot list. I ordered a new bare WD3200AAJB-00J3A0 from Amazon and downloaded the latest TrueImage-WD 2013. Acronis had never been installed on this machine before. With the WD (PS) & Hitachi (PM) connected, I got TI installed, but before it starts, it tells me to connect a WD drive, and CONTINUE is greyed out. DeviceManager shows both drives working normally with no conflicts. The new WD isn’t formatted or anything - just plugged in.
All of the critical data has been backed up to a WD 2TB external, and most of the unnecessary software has been uninstalled, but I don’t want to have to buy a new OS or reinstall the old one. Assuming I get TI to work, should I “clone” the old drive to the new, or “ghost”, or “backup”? I’ve installed an OS a few times, but I’ve never transferred one between drives.
Sony PCV-RS710G, BIOS dated 2004
XPH-SP3 auto WinUpdate
Pentium4 3GHz, 1/2GB RAM
Avast Free, SpyBot, IE8, Chrome30(unused)
It crashed last night after I went to bed, so it has been booted since the TI install, but it still doesn’t recognize the WD HDD.