Copy old hard drive to new and have dual boot?

[bendit]

Hello there,

Ok here goes. I currently have a 20gb hard drive in me laptop which is nearly full. I have just bought a 40 gb laptop hard drive and a usb caddy so I can connect the new 40gb laptop hard drive to my laptop.
What im wondering is can i copy my entire 20gb hard drive to the 40gb new one via USB, so that it would work and load the OS and everything and be exactly the same when I take the old 20gb one out and put the New 40gb one in.

Is this known as taking an image of my hard drive? What programs will I need, are there any free ones at all?
Also i Would like it if i could have a clean install of windows xp on the rest of the 20gb of the 40GB hard drive, and be able to choose which system i want to load at startup. Is this possible? Also what programs will i need?
Will the hard drive have to split up into 2 parts?
Hopefully someone can help me. Im new to this. If anyone knows of any threads already covering my questions could you please point me to them, or reply to my thread. Which ever is easiest for you.

Thanks in advance for any info

Tom

 

[psd99]

rite first question

i dont think u can load off of your usb drive
UNLESS YOUR BIOS SUPPORTS IT! tell us what motherboard u have?


now the software for all of your operations i would strongly reccomend its called NORTON GHOST!
it will clone one harddrive to another, no need to reinstall windows xp

now to install another version of windows on your usb drive should it let u
u need a programe called partition magic or u could use windows xp
u can set up a different version but id recomend it on a different partition

then i beleive u should get an option to decide with version of windows to go into just after bios!

hope this helps
get back with your motherboard or bios version

 

[Me__2001]

to have a dual boot system you'll need to make two partitions,as for the image i dont know if it will work

 

[floppybootstomp]

For back up, I use Acronis True Image V8.0, it's $50.00 to download, works perfectly. Link to Acronis

I don't know of any freebie programs that can do that, sorry.

Are you running Win XP at the moment? If so, what's the point of having two x Win XP installations? And I'm not even sure if that's possible, I don't think so, though I could be wrong.

If you can transfer data to new drive using USB then you should be able to make a backup easily.

As for partitioning, you may be able to do that from within XP, using the disk manager facility. Or consider software (not free) like Partition Manager 8.

It's possible freebie programs exist to do both functions, I don't know, do a Google or try Cnet for starters.

 

[bendit]

Hello again,
Thanks for the info. I think you have misunderstood me. I dont want to load off my usb drive. The 40gb usb drive is just a normal laptop hard drive in a case which lets you use it as an external drive. It can be removed easily. I was thinking of partitioning it, then creating an image of my current hard drive inside the laptop and sending it to the 40gb external. Then somehow installing a clean version of xp on the second partition. Then i would remove the old 20gb hard drive from me laptop, then take the 40gb out of the usb case and install it in the laptop. So i can have dual boot. One being like the old system on the 20gb, and a new Start. All being on the 40gb. It would just be a quicker way than just swapping drives round all the time.

Any idea on how i would do this? Would i partiton in windows first using partition magic, then put an image of old hard drive in partition 1 using Norton Ghost? Is that right?

Then how would i install a clean go of XP on the second so i can have dual boot?

Ps the old system is xp home, i would want the the 2nd to be xp pro.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Tom

 

[Techy]

just for the record flops, two XP installs is possible in a dual boot config. tried and tested

 

[BaseLine9]

XP home only allows a storage H/D or partition format of "Basic" XP Pro can be dynamic and basic

Just bare in mind if you installing the two o/s's

I cannot give much more advice as i have never tried it myself???

Hope it works out for you

Cheers

 

[floppybootstomp]

just for the record flops, two XP installs is possible in a dual boot config. tried and tested

Nice one Squire

Today, I have learnt something