laptop - Replacing notebook SATA hard disk with SSD without reinstalling

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?

Answer

dd probably won't work quite as you expect it to, as you really need something smarter than just a bit-for-bit copy of the raw drive/partition.

Check out Clonezilla, Acronis, DriveImageXML, Ghost / Ghost 4 Unix, and many others.