Momentus XT, Momentus, Momentus Thin, MobileMax, and other notebook drives

[PeterTy]

First Attempt:

Followed all the instructions, installed the latest version of Seagate DiskWizard to initialize the new XT disk and then to clone my laptop HDD onto the new Momentus XT using a storage adaptor.

Once I got to the stage of selecting the destination for the Clone, the XT drive apprears but is greyed out and I can not select it.

Windows sees the drive but I can not clone to it.

I even formatted the XT and was able to copy files to the XT but still could not access it with Seagate DiskWizard

Second Attempt:

Then I used another cloning software (Macrium Reflect) that actually was able to perform the clone but..

When I replaced the XT into my laptop I got either "missing operating system" or "no bootable drive"

I am running Windows 7-32 bit on an acer laptop. The Momentus XT drive is: ST750LX003 with SM12 firmware (most recent I believe).

Any help appreciated-this is chewing up way too much time.

[PeterTy]

Update and SOLUTION:

Third Attempt:

1. Created a Windows repair CD disk
2. Created an image of the current HDD using Windows back-up
3. Swapped out the old HDD with the new XT HDD
4. Booted from the CD, pointed the program to restore from the image that was created
5. Success-XT works fine

Note:

Offline Network files stored on the C drive  got lost somehow

Still don't understand why the Seagate DiskWizard didn't work!

[dgmkl]

An alternative method is to use Acronis Disk Director - clone the drive using a USB 3.0 connection, create a Windows repair disk to boot the system on the next start-up and swap the drives. The entire process took about 90 minutes (original drive was 640 GB). I haven't had any serious problems since the switch other than having to reinstall Firefox.