How do I copy contents of boot drive to new, larger replacement hard disk?

[Ken Moiarty]

I just bought a couple of Seagate 320 GB hard drives to replace two 120 GB
hard drives in my computer. I've already copied the contents of a storage
drive to one of the 320 GB Seagates. That was simple enough. But in
approaching how to go about copying the contents of my boot drive (c:/), to
my other Seagate 320 GB drive I'm not so clear, since Windows XP Pro won't
allow direct copying of certain system files while Windows XP is in
operation (duh). Obviously I need to perform this operation using an
operating system other than the one that on the disk I want to copy.
Can anyone suggest a good method (perhaps a feature or capability included
within WindowsXP Pro itself), a good disk copy product, and/or dos based
operating system I might want to use in order to successfully copy
everything on my present C:/ drive to my new Seagate drive, so that after
that I can then simply substitute the original 120 GB boot drive with the
new and fully ready to take over 320 GB boot drive.


Ken

 

[Malke]

I just bought a couple of Seagate 320 GB hard drives to replace two 120 GB
hard drives in my computer. I've already copied the contents of a storage
drive to one of the 320 GB Seagates. That was simple enough. But in
approaching how to go about copying the contents of my boot drive (c:/),
to my other Seagate 320 GB drive I'm not so clear, since Windows XP Pro
won't allow direct copying of certain system files while Windows XP is in
operation (duh). Obviously I need to perform this operation using an
operating system other than the one that on the disk I want to copy.
Can anyone suggest a good method (perhaps a feature or capability included
within WindowsXP Pro itself), a good disk copy product, and/or dos based
operating system I might want to use in order to successfully copy
everything on my present C:/ drive to my new Seagate drive, so that after
that I can then simply substitute the original 120 GB boot drive with the
new and fully ready to take over 320 GB boot drive.

If you bought the new drives retail, they will have come with a CD that
includes a cloning utility. Boot with that CD and follow instructions.
Basically, you will have the old drive installed as master and the new
drive as slave. Run the utility. Then you will shut down and remove the old
drive and put the new drive in as master.

If you bought the new drives whitebox, you can download the utility from
Seagate's website.

Malke

 

[Guest]

There are a variety of ways to accomplish this, but I highly recommend
CasparXP 3.0. I've successfully cloned the boot drive of all three of my PCs
to larger replacement drives and was up & running on the new drives in as
little as 45 minutes on my smallest drive to a couple of hours for my larger
drives.

You can check it out at http://www.fssdev.com. There is a trial download for
free or the full blown version for $49.95.

Regards,
Les