Alan said:
I'm sure this has been asked before but...
I'm a novice home user and recently bought a 160 Gig HDD. I want to use it
as my C drive without the problem of re-installing everything. How do I do
this. Obviously I am getting errors as some system files do not copy (as they
are in use!!)
Intent is to use the old HDD as a new D drive (slave).
Any ideas anyone?
You best bet is to use a drive imaging application. I personally swear by PowerQuest DriveImage 6 but that's both commercial and
long gone (it has been replaced by Norton DriveImage 8 and Norton Ghost 10). Many people like Norton Ghost but again it's
commercial. A cheaper option is Acronis' TrueImage which I have heard good things about. There are however others that you could
go with, including some free ones.
Whichever one you choose, you will need to "copy" the drive to the new one. Since you are copying a system drive (the one with the
OS), the process cannot be (usually) be completed while in Windows (a high-end imager may be able to pull it off but even then, not
always). What will most likely happen is that you will need to boot into DOS mode to run the program (with a boot disk-most
programs will provide you with the image, you have to provide your own floppy if you didn't buy it in a box.) Some programs don't
use DOS, and will run in their own proprietary operating system designed specifically for use by the imaging software. Again, these
will write it to the floppy you provide.
You then select to copy the old drive to the new drive and set it to do so. The selection process can occur in Windows, followed by
a reboot to it's OS/DOS mode if required or else the whole process will be done from it's OS/DOS mode. Either way, make sure you
have something to do for a couple of hours because the copy process can take a while, especially when not running in Windows with
it's fancy, accelerated drivers, and even more so if both drives are on the same channel (cable).
At this point you can switch the cables on the drives to make the new drive the master and the old one the slave. Make sure to
change the jumpers on the drives if necessary (if they are on the same cable), and update the drive settings in the BIOS if
necessary (if they're not set to AUTO).
Now reboot and let Windows detect the changes. It should automatically update and assign drive letters. If it does not, then open
the Disk Management Console (diskmgmt.msc). Right-click on a partition and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths", click Change,
then select the new drive letter and click OK, OK then repeat for the other one. (You may temporarily have to give one of the
partitions some other drive letter.)
HTH
