Switching Hard Drives

Is there any way to switch Vista from one hard drive to another?

I've recently purchased a new hard drive, considerably larger than the one
the computer came with. If possible, I'd like to avoid re-installing Vista
and just move it from one drive to the other so I can remove the original
drive (with its paltry 150 gb) and run Vista off the new 500 gb drive.

Is this feasible, or do I need to go the long way round and re-install
everything?

A drive imaging utility such as that from Acronis will do the job.

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"pumpingirony" <pumpingirony@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:655689F3-E031-421B-A2BA-D83968144A26@microsoft.com...
> Is there any way to switch Vista from one hard drive to another?
>
> I've recently purchased a new hard drive, considerably larger than the one
> the computer came with. If possible, I'd like to avoid re-installing
> Vista
> and just move it from one drive to the other so I can remove the original
> drive (with its paltry 150 gb) and run Vista off the new 500 gb drive.
>
> Is this feasible, or do I need to go the long way round and re-install
> everything?

What you want to do is to CLONE your current HD to a larger HD.
This is a common need when upsizing your HD, and most HD
manufacturers have free utilities on their websites that you can use to
clone the contents of HDs of their own make. Otherwise, cloning
utilities such as Ghost, True Image, Casper, etc. can be used. Be
aware that you want to copy the MBR as well as all the partitions,
so be sure you're CLONING and not making an image file. Most
3rd-party utilities do one or the other best, although most claim to do
both, and it may not be clear from their terminology which is which.
For cloning, I find Casper 4.0 to be an excellent utility.

*TimDaniels*

"pumpingirony" wrote:
> Is there any way to switch Vista from one hard drive to another?
>
> I've recently purchased a new hard drive, considerably larger than the one
> the computer came with. If possible, I'd like to avoid re-installing Vista
> and just move it from one drive to the other so I can remove the original
> drive (with its paltry 150 gb) and run Vista off the new 500 gb drive.
>
> Is this feasible, or do I need to go the long way round and re-install
> everything?