David said:
I want to upgrade my default hard drive. I would like to just copy, move,
clone the harddrive then install the new larger harddrive. I do have a
cloing software GoodSync. The new larger harddrive has been formated does
anyone know of problems that I may encounter. The ideal is to copy to new
drive, remove the orginal harddrive, install new harddrive, boot and go.
Your proposed procedure actually won't work, in that it will not create a
new bootable disk. GoodSync is not cloning software. Copying and
moving files will not place boot files in the locations they must occupy for
the disk to boot.
You need to use software that will actually clone the drive and give you a
new, bootable disk. If you don't have this now, non-OEM hard disks often
come with a utility to do this (along with a bunch of unnecessary and
expensive packaging), or you can download the utility from the disk
manufacturer. You'll likely find that this is about the same size
(100meg+) as the Acronis TrueImage free trial version.
If you use the Acronis TrueImage trial, run the clone process in *manual*
mode. This will allow you to specify that the entire space on the target
disk is used; automatic mode will copy the original partition size.
One of the fastest ways to do this task is to attach both drives to another
XP system that has enough space to install the cloning software, and then
clone the old to the new. You should be done in under half an hour.
When you install the new drive in the old system, set the jumpers (if any)
as they were on the old drive and do not install the old drive until after
the initial boot.
The existing formatting and partitioning on teh new drive is actually
irrelevant. The cloning software is going to replace it.
HTH
-pk
