Thinkpad T530 Hard Drive Cloning

Hello,
I'm looking for best practices, recommendations, lessons learned, etc. for copying the hard drive contents of one T530 to nine other identical T530s recently purchased for software engineering usage. A current snap shot of our old laptops shows that we have 214 programs loaded (majority of these programs are not pre-loaded from Lenova), so I'm looking for the most efficient and painless way of getting all the laptops loaded with an identical image. In the past we have used Norton Ghost but encountered issues with using legacy IBM Thinkpad laptops. Does the built-in Rescue and Recovery handle this process? Is a 3rd party product (such as Norton Ghost) recommended? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.
T530 Laptop specs:
Processor
Intel Core i7-3720QM Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.60 GHz)
Operating system
Genuine Windows 7 Professional (64 bit)
Operating system language
Genuine Windows 7 Professional 64 - English
Windows XP Mode
Windows 7 XP Mode - English
Display type
15.6" HD (1366 x 768) LED Backlit AntiGlare Display, Mobile Broadband Ready
System graphics
NVIDIA NVS 5400M Graphics with Optimus Technology, 1GB DDR3 Memory
Total memory
4 GB PC3-12800 DDR3 (1 DIMM)
Keyboard
Keyboard Backlit - US English
Pointing device
UltraNav with Fingerprint Reader
Camera
720p HD Camera with Microphone
Hard drive
500GB Hard Disk Drive, 7200rpm
Micro hard drive (mSATA)
16GB mSATA Solid State Cache Drive
Optical device
DVD Recordable
System expansion slots
Express Card Slot & 4-in-1 Card Reader
Battery
9 Cell Li-Ion TWL 70++
Power cord
135W AC Adapter - US (2pin)
Integrated WiFi wireless LAN adapters
Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 AGN
Integrated mobile broadband
Mobile Broadband upgradable

+1 for Acronis. You _can_ also do this with Rescue and Recovery, but it's quite a bit slower in my experience.
Pull a full drive image onto bootable media, then restore to the other drives when they are installed in the target machines.
[edit] Or boot Acronis stand-alone on each machine and clone from the original drive in an external enclosure/adapter. The options re resizing and preservation of volume ID (probably not what you want) are somewhat different when cloning vs restoring.
Historically, there have been cloning problems with ThinkPads when the target drive wasn't actually installed when it was written. Something to do with the way BIOS addresses the drives. This may not be a problem with newer machines, but ti's generally recommended.
Z.
The large print: please read the Community Participation Rules before posting. Include as much information as possible: model, machine type, operating system, and a descriptive subject line. Do not include personal information: serial number, telephone number, email address, etc. The fine print: I do not work for, nor do I speak for Lenovo. Unsolicited private messages will be ignored. ... GeezBlog
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do you have picture of the two hdd that you have in your possession?
This is the correct hardware maintenance manual for your system.
http://support.lenovo.com/en_AU/downloads/detail.page?DocID=UM016481
Regards,
Jin Li
May this year, be the year of 'DO'!
I am a volunteer, and not a paid staff of Lenovo or Microsoft

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GMAC-R60 wrote:
what does the x300 look like I've not seen one
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Hello cpbs, welcome to Lenovo forums!
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Follow @LenovoForums on Twitter! Try the forum search, before first posting: Forum Search Option
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hi antitruster50,
Welcome to the Forums.
Just to verify, did you created a usb recovery drive using this method and tried to boot from it? If you did and it doesn't work, check if you see the following in the BIOS and set it accordingly:
Security Tab:
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Exit Tab:
OS Optimized Defaults = Disabled / Other OS (if applicable)
Alternatively, you can also do the following:
1. Booting from the stock 500GB, mount the SSD into the Ideapad S210 using a 2.5" SATA enclosure
2. After successfully mounting the SSD, use Paragon Backup & Recovery 12 Home free trial to migrate the OS, drivers, app, etc. from the stock HDD to the SSD (complere guide here). When successful, remove the stock HDD and put the SSD in place and observe (no need to change any settings in the BIOS).
Let me know how it goes.
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<<<<UPDATE>>>>
If at first you don't succeed...
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Hope this helps others or at least encourages people to try hybrid drives over the much more expensive SSD option.

How do I set Catalogue to new larger internal hard drive and then delete the files from the smaller

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Grant, all I can say is that another user was having almost identical issues a month or so ago. Unfortunately I cannot find the discussion thread now but my feeling is that it never resolved satisfactorily while both drives were connected.
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Insanity is hereditary, you get it from your children
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External Hard Drive/Time Machine Questions

The hard drive on my four-year-old-plus MacBook Pro is apparently failing, and I can't afford a new MacBook Pro yet. So I bought an external hard drive, hoping to clone my hard drive and run my computer off the external hard drive if the main drive crashes.
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David Blomstrom wrote:
If I want to boot off a cloned hard drive, will I have to partition it, so I'm booting off a particular partition?
yes.
you would need to partition it and use one partition for cloning and the other for TM backups.
i don't recommend such a setup, however. it's like putting all eggs in one basket - if (not when) the external fails, you'd have lost both backups @ the same time !
If I do have to partition it, I understand I can use Apple's Disc Utilities to do the job. Can anyone tell me if there are any special steps or conventions I need to follow?
yes.
you can use the instructions in [this|http://web.me.com/pondini/AppleTips/DU.html] user tip.
I'd probably create a partition of about 200 GB for my cloned hard drive. (I'm currently using about 120GB on my internal hard drive.)
the partition for the clone needs to be just a big as your startup disk (e.g. 120 GB). the partition for TM backups, otoh, would ideally be 2-3 times the size of your startup disk.
more information [here_|http://web.me.com/pondini/TimeMachine/1.html].
Will it merely copy all my files to the external hard drive
it will back up everything on your startup disk unless you specifically exclude files from backups.
or will it create an operable clone?
no.
use software such as _*Carbon Copy Cloner*_ to clone your system.
Approximately how long do you think this initial backup will take, using firewire?
the initial backup could take overnight - depending on how much data is to be backed up.
Also, once I get my hard drive cloned, I'm thinking of booting up with the clone and upgrading to Snow Leopard. If everything works fine, then I'll upgrade my main (internal) hard drive to Snow Leopard as well.
yes, that will work just fine. in fact, some users recommend this technique even if the internal drive is not about to fail - better muck up a clone than the regular startup disk.
JGG

I'm Going To Have A New Hard Drive Installed (500GB)

Hi...
I’m going to have a 500GB hard drive installed (highest available so far - from what I know) in my MacBook Pro (bought March 2008) 17inch. I was wondering if there is anything I should pay attention to? And I’m going to go with a clean install (not to have the hard drive cloned over) - after I get it home, I’ll put the OS in myself and then all my other software etc... But what cross’s my mind is my “iTunes”...
What’s going to happen to my iTunes - and what can I do to keep all my songs and stuff?
Any comments, suggestions and opinions are welcome....
Thank you in advance...

No..... Your right - it just takes time for things to sink in - putting together a software program along with a “case” that will make my removed hard drive act like an external hard drive takes time to sink in.
Is this right? Am I going to have a new empty hard drive in the laptop with my removed hard drive in a case, enabling it to be used as an external hard drive? If so, then were dose the software go?
Do I need to download it first to the (soon to be removed) hard drive? And then access it when it becomes an external hard drive?
But the whole issue might be irrelevant because I really want to do a new install of my OS - I’ve been through the wringer with screen sharing and other products that have come and gone (passwords, screen names, ID’s, emails) MobileMe, Time Capsule, iWeb, BlueTooth, In home networks, Skype, iChat, AIM, Bonjour.... My head is spinning... Because my iMac and laptop are all using my one email (or at least at first they were) and one password and one email (sounds simple) but it’s not... If you wanna talk to someone using my iMac while I’m out and about in town - the computer’s think your trying to talk to yourself, the same email address (same passwords etc) - and in a lot of situations, you run into trouble trying to do this - or at least - you get confused (is that my email for the iMac or is that the email for my laptop - system preference this, system preference that)...
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So in closing - as long as that removed hard drive can be used as an external hard drive with the use of a “case” then I’m good to go... I’ll take it from there....
But please let me know if I can not use my soon to be “removed” hard drive as an external hard drive... Then I’m (maybe) willing to forget about my iTune’s... (I don’t know - I’ll see)....

Suggested Ultrabay Hard Drives?

Greetings,
I'm about to get a T410 from work, replacing a Z61t. I'd like to put a second bootable drive in the UltraBay running Win7 as a test partition ... am I correct in that I need the following parts?
ThinkPad Serial Hard Drive Bay Adapter III (part 43N3412, http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:item.detail?GroupID=38&Code=43N3412&current-category-id=6D8E5191FB0B45CBB39F45EB5B2B986E&&hide_menu_area=yes)
Any SATA drive that fits (e.g., http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/controller/e/web/LenovoPortal/en_US/catalog.workflow:item.detail?GroupID=38&Code=43N3411&current-category-id=30DCE24D4AD945988722793CBEEC65B3&&hide_menu_area=yes)
Any suggestions as to specific drive models would be appreciated - I'm having a bit of trouble validating the size of the drive that needs to fit into this adapter, as I'd like to shop around for prices rather than just defaulting to getting something direct from Lenovo.
Presumably the Ultrabay HD adapter I have from a Thinkpad Z61t wouldn't work? Don't believe it can support SATA.
Thanks in advance.

any 2.5 inch SATA Hdd with 9.5 mm thickness should be okay. the Z61t ultrabay uses a PATA connecting interface to the laptop, while the T400 and later uses a SATA connection, so they are not intercompatible as such.
Regards,
Jin Li
May this year, be the year of 'DO'!
I am a volunteer, and not a paid staff of Lenovo or Microsoft

How do I restore time machine alias files cloned from broken hard drive

My external hard drive broke (a tiny transistor broke off after the drive fell two feet to the floor) so I purchased a new one and had the Geek Squad clone what was on my old hard drive onto my new one. I was using Time Machine to backup my files. My external hard drive had a much larger capacity than my macbook pro, so I deleted a number of the files saved on my Macbook Pro, knowing that I could access my files whenever I plugged my ext. hard drive in.
After plugging my new external hard drive into my computer, however, I am finding only alias files and I do not know how to restore my data so I can access all of the files again.
Does anyone know how to restore my time machine data from the cloned data I had transferred from my broken external hard drive to my new external hard drive?
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morrisck wrote:
An update - I finally took both of my HDs in to an Apple store and they confirmed my fear: only alias files had been transferred from my old drive, meaning Geek Squad charged me $100 for 850 MB of unusable files.
That has been clear since early in this thread.
Geek Squad has agreed to retry the process
Why pay them to do what you don't need done??? Get a refund and buy an enclosure, which you should have anyway for backups.
but I'm now wishing that I had received more sound advice when I brought the drives into them in the first place.
Don't know who gave you that advice, but I sure wouldn't trust them with my data!
The Apple rep. informed me that my HD works perfectly fine and that it just needs a new enclosure (which I can buy for $20 online, as opposed to paying $100 for a data transfer).
Ummm, the action to take seems very clear to me . . . .

Thinkpad T530 Hard Drive Cloning

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