Upgrading To Bigger System Disk

J

James Bowery

What is the Microsoft knowledgebase article number dealing with how one can
upgrade to a bigger system disk for Windows XP?

Thanks.
 
Y

Yves Leclerc

I do not know it but I do know that if you use Norton Ghost to "clone" the
system disk to the newer drive, you do not have any problems.

Y.
 
J

James Bowery

Well then what is the equivalent of a knowledge base article for Norton
Ghost to do the same task?

The link:
http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/ghost/ghost_2003_info_tutorial.html
Has a bunch of tutorials on irrelevant or misleading topics.

For example, if you are going to clone across an IP connection, they state
you must have IDENTICAL HARDWARE ON BOTH MACHINES.

This does not allow for an upgrade of the system drive.

Please, this is such a common and critical task -- the article/tutorial
shouldn't require decryption.
 
P

Patrick Keenan

James Bowery said:
Well then what is the equivalent of a knowledge base article for Norton
Ghost to do the same task?

You may not need anything as elaborate as Ghost. Some drive manufacturers
publish free cloning utilities to allow easy migration to a new drive.

For example, Maxtor has MaxBlast. Download it and make the diskette,
install the new drive as primary and convert the original to secondary (or
use cable select as appropriate), and reboot with the diskette. Follow the
instructions and go for lunch - it can take a while. The only hitch is
that one of the disks must be a Maxtor product.

Doing this in this manner is very easy and straightforward. Within Ghost or
Drive Image, it's probably the most basic task. If you simply lauch the
app, you'll find the functions from the menu easily - clone a disk or
partition to another disk or partition. Just pick the right ones as source
and destination!

HTH
-pk
 
A

Alex Nichol

James said:
Well then what is the equivalent of a knowledge base article for Norton
Ghost to do the same task?

Rather than Ghost, What I use is BootIT NG, from http://www.BootitNG.com
($35 shareware - 30 day full functional trial)

Download, to its own folder, extract from the zip, run the bootitng to
make a boot floppy.

With the new drive plugged in as slave/secondary, boot the floppy,
Cancel Install, entering maintenance, then click on Partition work.
Highlight your C:,Copy, then on left select the new drive (HD1) and
Paste.

You might then consider a resize up a bit. Or highlight the free space
remaining beyond, click Create choosing Extended partition to use the
rest of the space, then similarly in that to make one or more volumes
in that (to become drives D:, etc)

Now click on 'View MBR' and in it highlight the entry for this new C
partition and click the 'Set Active' Click 'Write Standard MBR' and
Apply. Also make a check that this partition is in the same place in
the table as it was if you do a View MBR on the old one - if not use the
Up or down to correct it.

Close out, swap the disks to make the new one the one that boots, and
reboot into XP.
 

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