Installing Second Hard Drive

[Fred Hoffman]

I run a Dell Dimension 4400 desktop with WinXP Home SP2. My 20GB hard
drive has crashed twice in the last month and gives multiple errors in
the Dell Diagnostic Test. I intend to buy and install a second hard
drive (probably 120GB) and want to use it as my primary drive with
Windows mounted on the new drive. I would like to find documentation to
guide me in the steps necessary to install the new drive and make it
primary. Are there Microsoft Knowledge Base articles that can guide me
either in the installation process or in the proces of moving Windows to
the new drive?

 

[Shenan Stanley]

I run a Dell Dimension 4400 desktop with WinXP Home SP2. My 20GB hard
drive has crashed twice in the last month and gives multiple errors in
the Dell Diagnostic Test. I intend to buy and install a second hard
drive (probably 120GB) and want to use it as my primary drive with
Windows mounted on the new drive. I would like to find documentation
to guide me in the steps necessary to install the new drive and make
it primary. Are there Microsoft Knowledge Base articles that can
guide me either in the installation process or in the proces of
moving Windows to the new drive?

If you buy a retail (boxed) hard drive - it will have instructions and
likely a diskette/cd with utilities to help you transfer your current system
onto it as the primary drive.

 

[Guest]

OEM utilitys are not able to transfer xp to another hd 99.99% of the
time,install
hd as slave,in xp go to run,type:diskmgmt.msc In msc,R.click on the new
drives
unallocated space,select format,when its thru,exit msc.Then go to run,type:
XCOPY C:\*.* D:\ /c/h/e/k/r Agree to all in the DOS window.When its thru,
its done.D: being the new drives letter,but if asigned a diffrent
letter,just type
in letter instead of D:

 

[Shenan Stanley]

OEM utilitys are not able to transfer xp to another hd 99.99% of the
time,install
hd as slave,in xp go to run,type:diskmgmt.msc In msc,R.click on the
new drives
unallocated space,select format,when its thru,exit msc.Then go to
run,type: XCOPY C:\*.* D:\ /c/h/e/k/r Agree to all in the DOS
window.When its thru, its done.D: being the new drives letter,but if
asigned a diffrent letter,just type
in letter instead of D:

Greater than 100 successes out of about as many tries with such utilities
for me.
XCOPY surely won't do it. heh

If you wanted to suggest a better method of transfer for the system
(bootable XP) - I suggest Ghost or a similar imaging application.

 

[Abhilash Tibrewal]

To install the new hard disk:

http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=313348

If you wish to "clone" your existing Windows installation, you will need
third party software like Norton Ghost or Acronis true image.

http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=418

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Shenan

I believe that it was Andrew E. who one time suggested that a good way to
transfer multiple files is to set up an AOL buddy account on each computer
and send from one account to the other..

--
Mike Hall
MVP - Windows Shell/user

 

[Shenan Stanley]

Shenan

I believe that it was Andrew E. who one time suggested that a good
way to transfer multiple files is to set up an AOL buddy account on
each computer and send from one account to the other..

Wow.
I don't think I would have ever thought about that method. *grin*