Moving Windows XP to another HDD

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ben Holness
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Ben Holness

Hi,

I am trying to sort out a computer that has run out of disk space on the
main drive (the C: drive was only configured with 3Gb!!!)

I have a new hard disk and I would ideally like to simply transfer the 3Gb
data onto the new (bigger) hard disk, so that I don't have to re-install
windows, re-install all the applications etc.

The machine is running Windows XP (Home edition). I have a lot of
experience with older versions of Windows and DOS, but little experience
with XP.

I was hoping that I would be able to simply format the new drive, make it
bootable and copy the data from the old 3Gb drive across, but I can see no
way to make the new drive bootable.

Is it possible to do what I want to do, or will I need to re-install
everything?

If I need to re-install, will I have problems with the activation code
stuff?

Any hints appreciated :)

Cheers,

Ben
 
Ben Holness said:
I am trying to sort out a computer that has run out of disk space
on the main drive (the C: drive was only configured with 3Gb!!!)

I have a new hard disk and I would ideally like to simply transfer
the 3Gb data onto the new (bigger) hard disk, so that I don't
have to re-install windows, re-install all the applications etc.

The machine is running Windows XP (Home edition). I have a
lot of experience with older versions of Windows and DOS,
but little experience with XP.

I was hoping that I would be able to simply format the new drive,
make it bootable and copy the data from the old 3Gb drive across,
but I can see no way to make the new drive bootable.

Is it possible to do what I want to do, or will I need to re-install
everything?

If I need to re-install, will I have problems with the activation code
stuff?
Click to expand...


The easiest way is to get a cloning utility and do a "drive copy".
with Symantec's Ghost 9.0 or Partition Magic 8.0, or Acronis'
True Image, or RRStudio's etc. etc. will do this for you. If you use
drive copying as a way to periodically make a backup of your
entire hard drive to a spare hard drive, the cost of the utitility will
be amortized in a short time. Otherwise, you can try the utilities
that the drive manufacturers supply on CDs in retail boxes of
their drives, or you can download xxClone from xxClone.com .
I've also heard of Caster XP, but I haven't heard much about how
well it works.

All these utilities will make a bootable clone of your HD which
you can substitute in place of your old HD without having to do
any activation since the OS on the new HD will recognize that it's
still in the same PC and it won't notice anything else except that
there's more space to put things.

If you do such a "cloning", be sure to put the clone into a
primary partition and to copy over the Master Boot Record as
well - this all to make the clone bootable. Otherwise, you'll have
just an "image" of the old HD that won't be bootable. In such a
cloning operation, the formatting is carried over in the process,
so you don't have to format the disk beforehand. You can direct
the cloning utility to "use all of the disk" so that the entire space
on the new disk is formatted, not just the space needed to fit
the old disk's data.

If you want to use the old HD as extra space for storage, just
keep it connected as another HD in the system, and the clone
will see it as just another "Local Disk" with its own drive letter as
the root to its own file structure. You don't even have to play with
the BIOS's boot sequence if you jumper the new HD as the old
HD had been jumpered (presumably as Master) and jumper the
old HD as Slave. Otherwise, if you rely on Cable Select, just put
the new HD in the position that the old HD occupied, and move
the old HD to another position - either on the same IDE cable or
to another IDE channel. If you have SATA drives, just move the
old HD to another serial channel.

If you want to do multi-booting of the old OS and the new OS,
perhaps to keep a backup OS handy in case of a disk crash, see
my other postings under "multiboot" or "multi-boot" or "dual boot"
in the microsoft.public.windowsxp.* newsgroups in Groups.Google.

*TimDaniels*
 
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