cloning an existing Win installation/partition to another hard disc ?

[Wolfgang Hercker]

My existing hard disc is nearly full. I would like to "upgrade" it to a 250 GB disc.
The problem is that I don't want to re-install my Windows OS and all other programs and settings again.

I would appreciate it if I could take a snapshot from my old C: partition as image (e.g.With TrueImage)
and extract this image onto the new harddisc partition C:

However as far as I know this doesn't work. Windows recognizes the change in harddisc
through volume number. Can I avoid this with a trick ?

Furthermore I have not only to put the old image onto the new partition but
make this partition somehow active/bootable.

How do I do this? ?
Do I have to edit the partition table ?
What do I have to change ?

Does your solution work for WinXP as well as for Win2000 (Pro) installation ?

Wolfgang

 

[Patrick Keenan]

My existing hard disc is nearly full. I would like to "upgrade" it to a
250 GB disc.
The problem is that I don't want to re-install my Windows OS and all other
programs and settings again.

Easy to achieve.

I would appreciate it if I could take a snapshot from my old C: partition
as image (e.g.With TrueImage)
and extract this image onto the new harddisc partition C:

Just install TrueImage and clone to the new disk. You'll be done inside an
hour.

However as far as I know this doesn't work. Windows recognizes the change
in harddisc
through volume number. Can I avoid this with a trick ?

It does work and there's no trick.

Furthermore I have not only to put the old image onto the new partition
but
make this partition somehow active/bootable.

That's done automatically by the cloning process.

How do I do this? ?
Do I have to edit the partition table ?

Absolutely not.

What do I have to change ?

Does your solution work for WinXP as well as for Win2000 (Pro)
installation ?

Wolfgang

I regularly use TrueImage to clone disks and it does in fact work, and very
well. The change in volume number isn't a big issue and will not prevent
the system from booting and probably won't trigger activation.

I would suggest that you first clean out all temporary files to give
yourself enough space to download and install the TrueImage trial version.
http://www.acronis.com/

I have used this process on Win9x, ME, 2000 and XP.

Then add the new drive, either internally or on a USB connector, and direct
TrueImage to clone the C drive to the new drive. When it's done, shut
down and move the new drive to the boot position setting jumpers as
appropriate. To reduce confusion, do not attach the old drive. Reboot,
and you should be ready to go.

HTH
-pk

 

[David H. Lipman]

From: "Wolfgang Hercker" <[email protected]>

| My existing hard disc is nearly full. I would like to "upgrade" it to a 250 GB disc.
| The problem is that I don't want to re-install my Windows OS and all other programs and
| settings again.
|
| I would appreciate it if I could take a snapshot from my old C: partition as image
| (e.g.With TrueImage) and extract this image onto the new harddisc partition C:
|
| However as far as I know this doesn't work. Windows recognizes the change in harddisc
| through volume number. Can I avoid this with a trick ?
|
| Furthermore I have not only to put the old image onto the new partition but
| make this partition somehow active/bootable.
|
| How do I do this? ?
| Do I have to edit the partition table ?
| What do I have to change ?
|
| Does your solution work for WinXP as well as for Win2000 (Pro) installation ?
|
| Wolfgang


Software such as Norton Ghost will allow you to clone the old drive to the new drive.
If the old drive was a 40GB hard disk with lets say 1GB free, you would end up having the
same OS on the 250GB hard disk with 211GB of free space. This process is OS independent as
you would create a Ghost Boot Disk and clone "Drive -to- Drive".

There are some caveats. If the present hard drive is partitioned using FAT32, you should
upgrade to NTFS prior to cloning the drive.

You also need to make sure you have the latested Service pack. SP4 for Win2K and and SP2
for WinXP so the OS will be compatible with the 250MB drive.

The same goes for the system BIOS. You need to make sure the system BIOS is compatible with
a 250MB hard disk. The system *may* need a BIOS upgrade to recognize the new hard disk's
full capacity.

 

[Kerry Brown]

True Image is designed to do this and does it well. I prefer to clone the
old drive to the new one adjusting partition sizes during the cloning
process. If you prefer you can also image the existing drive then restore
the image to the new drive once it's installed. There are a couple of key
points to remember. If you image rather than clone, image the whole drive at
once not individual partitions one at a time.The first time you boot after
cloning or restoring the image to the new drive make sure that only the new
drive is installed. After the first boot from the new drive the old drive
can be safely reinstalled as a secondary drive. If you have a computer that
uses a "factory restore" procedure that has a partition (sometimes hidden)
on the hard drive this partition must also be copied to the new drive and
left exactly the same size and type as on the old drive.

 

[DL]

Follow instructions in True Image, it may depend on the version as to
whether it can expand the partitions to fill the new disk. I know version 9
has this capability
Once cloned you have to disconnect old drive and set new as master *before*
booting
Works fine for me in win2k or winxp

 

[Todd H.]

Does your solution work for WinXP as well as for Win2000 (Pro)
installation ?

I recently did this with a boxed Seagate harddrive kit. Their
included DiscWizard software was ridiculously easy to use, and worked
perfectly moving my win2k pro system from a 150G disk to a 400G disk.
No surprises at all.

Frankly I was shocked. Discwizard even ran withing the existing
windows partition it was copying which made it more impressive to me,
considering windows makes open files rather tricky to copy well, as I
recalled.

Anyway, give it a shot if you have a Seagate disk.

Best Regards,

 

[Jan Kannemacher]

I would appreciate it if I could take a snapshot from my old C: partition as image (e.g.With TrueImage)
and extract this image onto the new harddisc partition C:

Try Drive Snapshot. http://www.drivesnapshot.de

However as far as I know this doesn't work. Windows recognizes the change in harddisc
through volume number. Can I avoid this with a trick ?

What's the problem? Windows won't die or pout if you change the drive.

Does your solution work for WinXP as well as for Win2000 (Pro) installation ?

Yes, and it works for Windows Server 2003 as well.




JK'06

 

[John of Aix]

I recently did this with a boxed Seagate harddrive kit. Their
included DiscWizard software was ridiculously easy to use, and worked
perfectly moving my win2k pro system from a 150G disk to a 400G disk.
No surprises at all.

Frankly I was shocked. Discwizard even ran withing the existing
windows partition it was copying which made it more impressive to me,
considering windows makes open files rather tricky to copy well, as I
recalled.

Anyway, give it a shot if you have a Seagate disk.

The same for Maxblast from Maxtor, I recently moved everything to
another disk without problem, a few icons lost their association but
that was about it. It seems it will work for other disks as long as one
of the two is a Maxtor.

 

[Tex Shalter]

or Powerquest "Drive Image"