Changing XP Boot Drive to Larger One

[Guest]

Hello, I have the misfortune of having a perfectly running Xp Profesional OS
on a 40 Gb HD. I recently finally outgrew it and I purchased a 160 Gb HD and
would like to transfer my original HD to the New one. I have done many HD
upgrades, but Xp instead of making life easier for me, it is making it a
living hell.

I've been transferring the 40 onto the 160 for about a week now.
Different partitions, different softwares, through DOS, through XP I am on
the virge of a nervous breakdown.

If someone could give me any tips or tricks that I may be over looking, it
wopuld be much appreciated.
Thanks.

 

[T. Waters]

What software have you tried so far for the transfer?
What is the configuration of the 2 drives regarding master/slave, USB, etc.

 

[Ron Martell]

Hello, I have the misfortune of having a perfectly running Xp Profesional OS
on a 40 Gb HD. I recently finally outgrew it and I purchased a 160 Gb HD and
would like to transfer my original HD to the New one. I have done many HD
upgrades, but Xp instead of making life easier for me, it is making it a
living hell.

I've been transferring the 40 onto the 160 for about a week now.
Different partitions, different softwares, through DOS, through XP I am on
the virge of a nervous breakdown.

If someone could give me any tips or tricks that I may be over looking, it
wopuld be much appreciated.
Thanks.

1. Do not boot into Windows XP with both drives installed in the
computer, at least not until *after* the transfer is finished.

2. Go to the hard drive manufacturer's web site and download the
bootable diskette version of their disk cloning software. Using
Windows based disk cloning software will mess things up in terms of
drive letter assignments.

3. Boot the computer with the diskette and transfer the complete hard
drive contents to the new drive. If the drive has multiple partitions
then this may be a bit more complex if you want to adjust the
partition sizes.

4. Remove the old hard drive, configure the new drive as Primary IDE
Master drive and boot the computer.

5. Once the computer is up and running okay with the new drive in
place you can reinstall the old drive as a second hard drive if you
want to.

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

 

[Guest]

If you are fortunate, there are 'tools' available from Manufacturer's to
perform this task. Seagate - Seatools, Maxtor has it's own etc.

If you download the relevant product for your HDD, then make up a bootable
CD or FDD.

Perform the cloning and then go ahead as advised by Ron.

If you have an IBM / Hitachi or Samsung: you may be out of luck and need to
try doing this with a DOS start-up diskette. Regardless it will need an
appropriate version of XCOPY on the floppy. This will work for all but NTFS
drives.

Using XCOPY to Copy the full content of an hard drive :

With MS-DOS command line, write the following :
xcopy32 c:\ d:\ /S/E/H/C/K/R ( d: is the second hard drive ).

Then you are able to replace c:\ and boot from d:\ if necessary.

If this won't run on your environment then you can buy 3rd party cloning
products such as Ghost.

In all cases you may need to perform a repair installation, having moved to
a new Hard Drive before the system will startup properly.

 

[Guest]

The Software that I tried initially was called 'MaxBLAST3' I purchased a
Maxtor HD for another computer that is running 98Me and that software worked
so well I decided it was time for an upgrade of my own.

On ReBoot (after the 16 hour transfer) Xp goes into a check HD mode and
finds various errors. At the end of the HD scan it ReBoots and does the same
thing... Over and Over and Over and...... well you get the idea.

I then tried splitting the HD, two halfs of 80Gb. I tried first with the
primary partition of Fat32.... the same thing.
After I tried again with the primary partition of NTFS, again the same thing
occurred.

MaxBLAST3 gave a warning that for Windows operating systems, the Windows
version of the software should be used. I installed it and again the same
thing happened.

I then tried using Norton Ghost 9, the 'Copy Drive' feature. The software
would not even complete the copy.

I then figured... let me create a Drive Image with Ghost and restore it to
the new drive, swap the HDs and it would be done..... WRONG... The copy would
not boot.

I have been working on computers since the the Commodore Pet PC. I am able
to trouble shoot almost anything...... However, this situation is driving me
insane.

I am leaning towards XP not wanting to be upgraded.
I know for fact that if it experiences various Hardware changes, it asks you
for a reactivation key.

Could this be another form of Control ? I hope not.

Thanks.

 

[Ron Martell]

XCOPY32 will not run from a DOS boot disk and it is not part of
Windows XP.

Furthermore using XCOPY/XCOPY32 Win95/98/Me) to copy drives can lead
to corruption of the short (8+3) file names.

There is a free thirdparty utility named XXCOPY which does work and
which can be obtained from http://www.xxcopy.com but it is very slow.


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

 

[Guest]

Its strange that sometimes one tends to forget the simple things.
Here I am with an Internet connection getting help from a support group,
instead of going to the WD home page.

So here is the update...
I downloaded the software from WD. To my disbelief, it looks a lot like the
Maxtor software. It may very well be taylored for the WD drives so I am
giving it a try.

I am currently transferring my D: drive (100 Gb 1o000 rpm) to the 160 Gb
7200 rpm I bought.
The 160 Gb will become my new D:

I think that the 10k drive would be better used as the new boot drive, so I
will transfer the older 40 Gb drive to the 100 Gb.

If all works well I should be completed by monday.... The only issue that
concerns me is that the software is Identical to what I have already used.

Well... Thank you all for the help, I will let you know how this ends,
Hopefully not with a hole in my monitor....
Cheers

 

[Bill Bradshaw]

Hello, I have the misfortune of having a perfectly running Xp
Profesional OS on a 40 Gb HD. I recently finally outgrew it and I
purchased a 160 Gb HD and would like to transfer my original HD to
the New one. I have done many HD upgrades, but Xp instead of making
life easier for me, it is making it a living hell.

I've been transferring the 40 onto the 160 for about a week now.
Different partitions, different softwares, through DOS, through XP I
am on the virge of a nervous breakdown.

If someone could give me any tips or tricks that I may be over
looking, it wopuld be much appreciated.
Thanks.

I just moved from a 27 gig to a 160 gig harddrive. I used the free clone
maxx available here.

http://www.pcinspector.de/clone-maxx/uk/welcome.htm

You make the clone by setting your 40 as the master and the 160 as the
slave. Once the cloning has been completed you shift your cable connectors
and jumper the 160 to be the master or single drive depending on how you
intend to configure your system.

Once you clone your existing harddrive you will need software to move and
resize your partitions. I do not have a source for a free program to do
this since I own Partition Magic 8.01 and used it.

 

[John]

Its strange that sometimes one tends to forget the simple things.
Here I am with an Internet connection getting help from a support group,
instead of going to the WD home page.

So here is the update...
I downloaded the software from WD. To my disbelief, it looks a lot like the
Maxtor software. It may very well be taylored for the WD drives so I am
giving it a try.

I am currently transferring my D: drive (100 Gb 1o000 rpm) to the 160 Gb
7200 rpm I bought.
The 160 Gb will become my new D:

I think that the 10k drive would be better used as the new boot drive, so I
will transfer the older 40 Gb drive to the 100 Gb.

If all works well I should be completed by monday.... The only issue that
concerns me is that the software is Identical to what I have already used.

Well... Thank you all for the help, I will let you know how this ends,
Hopefully not with a hole in my monitor....
Cheers

If it takes that long I would just reinstall the OS.

John

 

[Guest]

I have completed what was driving me Insane.

I was not successful using the Graphical program provided from WD, half way
thought the cloning it stopped and was about to give up.

As it turns out, if you want something done right, pure DOS is the best.

Bill Bradshaws mehtod of transferring the information from one hard drive to
the other worked flawlessly.

The program Clone Maxx suggested is a pure DOS program that copies LBA to
LBA and readjusts itself if it encounters errors in the copy. (Reminded me of
the 1980s....Text interfaces ) It is fast and by far one of the quickest
I've used.
As the original HD was a 40Gb drive.
The copy on the 100 Gb only shows up as a 40 Gb, so the partition needed to
be readjusted to free up the unallocated space. Partition Magic took care of
that.

I now have my 10K rpm C: drive of 100 Gb identical to my old 40 Gb and 160
Gb D: drive.

Its true it took a while to finally complete my task, but where there is a
will there is a way.

Thank You everyone,
for all your help....
Cheers. (B)(@)(B)