disk imaging

  • Thread starter Thread starter Neil Cummins
  • Start date Start date
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Neil Cummins

I have 3 hard disks and a CD-ROM fitted to my Athlon XP2000 powered PC,
running XP home. I am about to fit a DVD/CD RW, which means removing one of
my hard drives - I plan to remove the oldest and smallest (a 12Gb drive) -
unfortunately it is the one with XP and most of my programmes installed on
it, including those I have downloaded and don't have on CD. Is there any
easy (and free!) way of transfering the data from my small drive to a larger
one (I have an empty 40Gb drive) without having to re-install everything - I
don't want to have to buy a copy of 'ghost' just to use it once.

Many thanks

Neil
 
Why not set the current hd with xp on a IDE chain with a slave,
the set other IDE with the dvd at end as slave,hd 1st set as master.
Hence all 3 hds are installed and dvd/cd player.Works fine on my mb.You
can use XCOPY to transfer xp,set xp hd as master,new as slave,have it formatted
with a primary partition,go to run,type:
XCOPY C:\*.* D:\ /c/h/e/k/r A DOS window will open,agree to all.
D: being the new hd letter but you can substitute it with any letter.
 
If you want to copy all of the old drive to a new drive, try the disk
preparation and copy tools provided free by the disk manufacturer. These
come with retail boxed disks, on a floppy (or two) or on a CDROM. They are
also free to download from the support website of the disk maker. Some
tools work on all disks, but others only work if they detect at least one
disk by that manufacturer in the PC.

To avoid confusion in the PC, it would be best to copy the old disk to the
new one, switch master/slave setting as necessary, then remove the old disk
and reboot. Having XP on two different drives could get confusing to the
PC. Be sure that the new drive is assigned the same drive letter as the old
drive had. The imaging software should handle this for you, but it is worth
checking, especially if you have any booting problems. Of course, the
partition with XP must be declared "active", meaning bootable.

Speaking of partitions, you might want to make more than one partition on
the new drive. If so, do this before transferring the image. otherwise you
will need some thrid-party program like Partition Magic o do this after XP
is up and running. The disk preparation tools should give you this option,
probably in a simple gaphical interface.

I have used the tools by Maxtor and Seagate; both are pretty easy to use.

By the way, I would not try to copy the operating system with XCOPY, unless
you can do it from outside of XP (i.e., in true DOS), and that will not work
on NTFS partitions. Trying to copy XP from within XP in a command prompt
window usually misses some files that are locked while XP is operating.
However, XCOPY is a great tool for backing up data files.
 
Bob Harris said:
If you want to copy all of the old drive to a new drive, try the disk
preparation and copy tools provided free by the disk manufacturer. These
come with retail boxed disks, on a floppy (or two) or on a CDROM. They are
also free to download from the support website of the disk maker. Some
tools work on all disks, but others only work if they detect at least one
disk by that manufacturer in the PC.

To avoid confusion in the PC, it would be best to copy the old disk to the
new one, switch master/slave setting as necessary, then remove the old disk
and reboot. Having XP on two different drives could get confusing to the
PC. Be sure that the new drive is assigned the same drive letter as the old
drive had. The imaging software should handle this for you, but it is worth
checking, especially if you have any booting problems. Of course, the
partition with XP must be declared "active", meaning bootable.

Speaking of partitions, you might want to make more than one partition on
the new drive. If so, do this before transferring the image. otherwise you
will need some thrid-party program like Partition Magic o do this after XP
is up and running. The disk preparation tools should give you this option,
probably in a simple gaphical interface.

I have used the tools by Maxtor and Seagate; both are pretty easy to use.

By the way, I would not try to copy the operating system with XCOPY, unless
you can do it from outside of XP (i.e., in true DOS), and that will not work
on NTFS partitions. Trying to copy XP from within XP in a command prompt
window usually misses some files that are locked while XP is operating.
However, XCOPY is a great tool for backing up data files.
Click to expand...

Bob

Many thanks for the steer - I'm just downloading a suitable tool from the
Maxtor web site - 50 odd Mb - thank god for broadband!

Regards

Neil
 
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