Copying XP to another hard drive

[Guest]

I have an 8 GB hard drive in my computer right now. If I want to replace it
with an 80 GB hard drive, what is the easiest way to do so? I have a cable
to hook both hard drives up to copy over files, but I would think that XP
needs to be installed first. I have a recovery disk that will restore to
Windows 98 and then I could install XP using my XP disk, but I'm hoping there
is an easier way to do this. If anyone could help, I would greatly
appreciate it.

 

[Harry Ohrn]

Firstly are you certain that your motherboard's BIOS will recognize an 80GB
drive? Older BIOS often have size limitations.
Secondly do you want to install XP to the drive and then simply copy your
data off the old drive or do you want to upgrade from Windows 98 to XP?

 

[Guest]

I have an 8 GB hard drive in my computer right now. If I want to replace it
with an 80 GB hard drive, what is the easiest way to do so? I have a cable
to hook both hard drives up to copy over files, but I would think that XP
needs to be installed first. I have a recovery disk that will restore to
Windows 98 and then I could install XP using my XP disk, but I'm hoping there
is an easier way to do this. If anyone could help, I would greatly
appreciate it.

If all else fails, I would think you could do an XP "Backup" to the new
hard disk, then restore back to the new disk. If Backup is not on your
system, then look for it on your XP install disk.

Alternatively people do make software that will let you directly copy
over your whole system to the new disk. I suspect they charge you for
it too though. Google should be able to give you leads on this approach.

Good luck....

Bill

 

[Sharon F]

I have an 8 GB hard drive in my computer right now. If I want to replace it
with an 80 GB hard drive, what is the easiest way to do so? I have a cable
to hook both hard drives up to copy over files, but I would think that XP
needs to be installed first. I have a recovery disk that will restore to
Windows 98 and then I could install XP using my XP disk, but I'm hoping there
is an easier way to do this. If anyone could help, I would greatly
appreciate it.

I had to replace my XP drive last August. Although there have been mixed
opinions on the method, I decided to use the tools that came with the drive
to transfer XP to the new drive. It worked well and am still using the
transferred operating system.

There were very specific directions for this process (some in drive manual
and some on the CD with the tools). Besides following the directions, I
also made sure that I had the most recent version of Western Digital's
Lifeguard tools before starting.

 

[Ron Martell]

I have an 8 GB hard drive in my computer right now. If I want to replace it
with an 80 GB hard drive, what is the easiest way to do so? I have a cable
to hook both hard drives up to copy over files, but I would think that XP
needs to be installed first. I have a recovery disk that will restore to
Windows 98 and then I could install XP using my XP disk, but I'm hoping there
is an easier way to do this. If anyone could help, I would greatly
appreciate it.

I just used a utility called Copy/Wipe from www.bootitng.com to copy a
40 gb drive to a new 120 gb. The drive had 3 primary partitions plus
an extended partition with 4 logical drives in it.

Copy/Wipe transferred everything and it all worked okay after the
transfer. However I used the option in Copy/Wipe to enlarge the old
drive partition so as to use all of the space on the new drive. This
mostly worked, but one of the logical drives was not enlarged and the
drive was left with some unallocated space after the transfer.

I then had to use another utility to fix up the partition sizes and
make use of the unallocated space. But overall the results were
acceptable.

Hope this is of some assistance.

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

In memory of a dear friend Alex Nichol MVP
http://aumha.org/alex.htm