How to replace your hard drive without losing data

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Upgrade your laptop's storage in a few simple steps

Your laptop should boot into Windows as normal and everything will be exactly the same, except you will have a newer drive. If your drive is faulty, or has stopped working then cloning won't be possible. In this case, simply replace the drive with the new one. You will need to use your laptop's restore CD or Windows CD to reinstall your operating system. If the drive is not dead, you can put it in the caddy and attempt to copy your data on to your new drive.

If you are not going to use your old drive, you should ensure all your old data is removed before you dispose of it. Simply deleting the data is not good enough – you need to make sure data cannot be recovered. If you have used Acronis TrueImage to clone your drive, you can use the secure drive erase tool that is part of the application. However, you can also download a free program, FileShredder, which can be used to securely wipe files.

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