kakimani said:
Hi Everyone,
I am using a 40Gb Hard Drive and it is full. i bought a new 160Gb hard
drive
and my actual problem is my Cabinet supports only one hard drive at any
time.
so i thought of replacing my 40Gb completly and place a 160Gb drive.
please
suggest me how to transfer the set up, files , my personal data..
Thanks in Advance
Chaithanya Kakimani
You need to clone the disk to do this, if you want an exact copy. This
will get you back up in the shortest amount of time, without having to
reinstall everything.
However, if your 40 gig disk is full, you have some logistical problems:
You have to clear enough space, perhaps a half-gig, to install cloning
software.
You can download from
www.acronis.com a 15-day trial version of TrueImage,
which will do exactly what you want and very well. However, it's about 100
meg, plus the installed size.
So you need to clear as much as you can. Start this with ccleaner, from
www.ccleaner.com. Let it delete only temporary files and temporary
internet files first. This may clear all the space you need.
Then, download and install the True Image demo. You might download it on
another machine, copy that to CD or USB drive, and carry it over - this will
save some space.
Attach the new 160 gig drive via a USB2 box - these are inexpensive,
starting around $20. You may have to set drive jumpers to have the drive
recognised properly; and this can take a little experimentation. For
example, most drives should have the MASTER jumper set in these cases, but
sometimes WD drives need to have *no* jumpers.
Don't bother with any dialogs that want to help you partition the drive.
TrueImage will delete these partitions anyway.
Start up True Image, and use the "disk clone" feature, set to MANUAL, not
automatic. If you choose Automatic, you won't see the option to resize the
partition, and that's what you need to do to use the entire size of the new
drive. Select the current drive as the source, point it at the new drive
as the destination, and let it go.
This should not take a really long time, though with one system I have seen
it take hours to do 40 gig; normally it takes under 30 minutes.
When the process is complete, shut everything down, remove the 40 gig drive
and put the 160 in its place, making sure drive jumpers are set correctly.
Restart the system, and you should be done, with no further adjustments or
data transfer required.
You can attach the 40 gig drive to the USB2 box, and use it for backup or
other storage. But don't alter its contents till you are absolutely sure
that everything is operating properly. Given that drives are not
particularly expensive now, I'd suggest setting it aside for safety for at
least 90 days, perhaps more.
If you want to do a fresh install, first export all the email account
settings, and note the message store locations. Then, swap drives, do the
fresh install, and get all the updates. Create your accounts. Install any
security apps you need, all your other applications, and make sure the
system is behaving properly. Now, attach the old drive with the USB2 box
you needed for the method above, locate your exported email settings and
import them, then import the messages; locate your personal data and simply
copy that over.
One note of caution: If your system is XP PRO, and if you invoked
encryption, you cannot just use the fresh-install routine without first
exporting and importing the account credentials (which you should have done
anyway).
If you fail to do that, the files will remain encrypted and you will
*never* get access to them until you have those credentials, and the only
place to get them is from the original accounts, on a running system.
Simply re-creating the accounts on the new drive will *not* work.
HTH
-pk
