I want to upgrade my hdd on my laptop as it is only 40gb. The laptop is a Dell inspiron 1300 and came without a windows cd. (Windows Installation is partitioned on HDD bought direct from DELL) How would I replace the 40gb HDD with a higher capacity one without needing to buy a new copy of windows? ...Keeping all of my data, intalled software, drivers and settings would be a bonus as it can be long winded doing a fresh install of everything.
get an external usb2 2.5" drive enclosure that works for your hd as can be ide or sata. can clone the internal hd onto the external then switch the drives around so that the bigger drive is internal & the 40gig is external.
you need to get a hard drive imaging software. The cheapest (20.00) and easiest to use is easyimage. When you buy a hard drive they sometimes come with a basic cloning software. Also paragon has a free imaging software "paragon drivebackup express" Once you make your backup it's good to save it to an external hard drive. Another thing is dell laptops sometimes have problems restoring but it can be done. They are mentioned alot in the acronis forums. below is the link to the acronis forums, they discuss backing up and restoring hard drives. The problems you see in that forum are applicable no matter what software you use. You can get some ideas on how to backup and restore. http://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=65
