Replacing Laptop HD -- WTF, i thought this was easy...

[beer4u]

So I am trying to replace my (only) harddrive on a hp pavillion dv 2000 series laptop -- upgrading of course, to a 500GB hd 5400rpm. So let me preface this with my particular notebook only "allows" a upgrade to 350GB 5400rpm (however I am trying to force the issue).
So I have gone along with this anyway, activated the drive, formatted it, and used norton ghost to replicate my drive onto it (copying the MBR and boot record). When i install the new drive, everything seems to load fine, asks for pw and then hits a blue screen with only a mouse. So i rebooted, did the F8 dance, and figured I should try and use a Vista Recovery disk. Once this was completed I got the following message:

problem event name startuprepairV2
problem signature 01 external media
problem signature 02 6.0.6000.16386.6.0.6001.18000
problem signature 03 0
problem signature 04 65537
problem signature 05 unknown
problem signature 06 No Root Cause
problem signature 07 0
problem signature 08 2
problem signature 09 wrprepair
problem signature 10 161
OS version 6.0.6000.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID 1033

So i am trying to figure out if I am able to use this 500GB drive without proper specs from HP or do I need to return and go with the slower, smaller, insufficient 350GB? I did talk to HP and they stonewalled me, with "get a 350GB from us". Any help, anyone? Also another note -- i first got a 500GB 7400 rpm, that did the same song and dance. So I returned it. i tried to order the 350, but got the 500GB instead -- usually an error I like, but now turning into a pain. I could exchange and do it all over again, but I like the notion that I got more bang for my buck...

[Computer Guru]

You shouldn't copy the MBR to a disk of a different size.

Norton Ghost sucks. It's incompatible with Vista+ in many cases.

Create a new partition on the 500GB disk, copy the *files* and not the image of the disk over (You can use an Ubuntu Live CD to do the copying, or hook both disks up to another PC and do it from there). Swap the old disk out and the new disk in, and follow our instructions on fixing the bootloader from here: Recovering the Vista Bootloader from the DVD - NeoSmart Technologies Wiki


Good luck. Let us know how it goes.