A new hard drive

[John]

I currently have only 60GB on the hard drive on my system (XP Home SP3) . I
would like to upgrade to a 300-500GB drive. Is there some way in which I
could transfer my entire hard drive contents to a brand new hard drive, such
that I would be able to boot from, and run all of my applications from, the
new hard drive?

 

[Andrew E.]

The hds need to be IDE,not SATA.If you run IDE,then set the new hd as
slave on the same IDE cable as C:.Once in xp,format the hd,once thru,go to
run,type: XCOPY C:\*.* D:\ /c/h/e/k/r Agree to all in the DOS window,once
its thru,youre finished.Also,D: being the new hd,if asigned a diffrent letter
then use that letter instead..XCOPY takes 10-15 minutes.

 

[DL]

Ignore missinformation from Andrew
The HD manufacturers have a free tool to copy all to your new drive. *read*
the instructions before use!!!
Or a third party Tool such as Acronis TI can do the same thing, as well as
serving as a backup application

Broadly speaking you install the new HD, connected as appropriate, commence
the copy/clone, once completed, *immediately* shutdown. Disconnect old
drive, reset new as master, if required, then reboot

 

[Peter Foldes]

Andrew

You keep giving bad advice . Have told you numerous times to leave the newsgroups
because you are causing more issues for the OP's then they have. Go get a life

 

[Hunter01]

You already said this in another thread, and you were already corrected
there. This will not work, this is an ollldd solution from the win9x
days and wont work with xp, you're much better off using a proper
imaging solution if you actually want to see it work.

 

[Anteaus]

DL is right. This is good advice.

Correct. The point that Andrew doesn't seem to understand is that XP, unlike
98, holds certain files open all the time, making a full copy using straight
XCOPY impossible. There are ways round this such as using shadow copy, or by
copying with a CD-based OS such as BartPE or Knoppix, but the Acronis route
is simpler and more foolproof.

As mentioned your disk manufacturer may offer a feature-limited copy of
Acronis or similar for free. Check first. If not a free alternative to
Acronis can be had from:
http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm
I can't vouch for this in all situations but I've used it a few times with
good results. It's also included in the UBCD4Win boot CD, which is possibly
the best way to use it.

 

[David B.]

There are many, many points that Andrew doesn't understand, not just that
one.

 

[John]

I obtained Acronis, and am ready to clone my new drive. Thanks for you
input.