New drive, old system?

[Konrad]

Hi.
Forgive me my English.
I want to change my system hard drive. I've just bought new hard drive,
and I want to replace my old drive with this new one.
But, I want to keep the whole system like it is, by simply copying ALL
the contents of the old drive to the new one, that is:
1. I will copy contents of old drive (c:\) to the new drive, I mean all
- the system, documents, etc...
2. I will then turn off the computer
3. I will connect the new drive in place of the old one, so the system
should start from the new one, yes? The old drive will be simply removed
from the PC
4. I will turn on the computer.

I heard this is impossible, but I don't know any reason, why it
shouldn't work. Can you explain me this? Had anyone of you any
experience with this?

 

[DJ Borell]

Although it's possible to do it without one, the best way to do this is by
using a utility to copy the contents of one drive to the other.

You will -

1) Install both drives into the system, with the first drive remaining your
system drive and the second as a slave or installed on the secondary IDE
channel

2) Run the utility to copy the contents of your system drive to the new
drive

3) Remove the first drive and replace the second drive to the system drive's
location

4) Boot the system

There are many utilities capable of this, such as Norton Ghost, but most
drive manufacturers provide a utility with the drive to do this for free.

 

[Yves Leclerc]

You can chnage hard drive, but you can not "copy" the old to the new one.

You need to look at Norton Ghost so as to "clone" the old hard drive to the
new one.

The new hard drive needs to first be seen in the computer's BIOS correctly.

 

[Menno Hershberger]

Hi.
Forgive me my English.
I want to change my system hard drive. I've just bought new hard
drive, and I want to replace my old drive with this new one.
But, I want to keep the whole system like it is, by simply copying ALL
the contents of the old drive to the new one, that is:
1. I will copy contents of old drive (c:\) to the new drive, I mean
all - the system, documents, etc...
2. I will then turn off the computer
3. I will connect the new drive in place of the old one, so the system
should start from the new one, yes? The old drive will be simply
removed from the PC
4. I will turn on the computer.

I heard this is impossible, but I don't know any reason, why it
shouldn't work. Can you explain me this? Had anyone of you any
experience with this?

It's possible. The company you bought the hard drive from should have
software that will clone the drive for you. If it wasn't included with
the drive, then go to the hardware manufacturer's site and download
it. Personally I use Apricorn's EZ Clone software which boots from a
CD. Unfortunately it isn't free, but it has worked for me flawlessly.

 

[Konrad]

Konrad wrote:

Wow, thank you all!
I suppose Windows XP doesn't have any tools built in, to do that?

 

[DJ Borell]

HA! Nice signature ;-)

It's possible. The company you bought the hard drive from should have
software that will clone the drive for you. If it wasn't included with
the drive, then go to the hardware manufacturer's site and download
it. Personally I use Apricorn's EZ Clone software which boots from a
CD. Unfortunately it isn't free, but it has worked for me flawlessly.

 

[DJ Borell]

No, it doesn't. You'll need to use third-party software.

 

[Morituri-|-Max]

Hi.
Forgive me my English.
I want to change my system hard drive. I've just bought new hard
drive, and I want to replace my old drive with this new one.
But, I want to keep the whole system like it is, by simply copying ALL
the contents of the old drive to the new one, that is:
1. I will copy contents of old drive (c:\) to the new drive, I mean
all - the system, documents, etc...
2. I will then turn off the computer
3. I will connect the new drive in place of the old one, so the system
should start from the new one, yes? The old drive will be simply
removed from the PC
4. I will turn on the computer.

I heard this is impossible, but I don't know any reason, why it
shouldn't work. Can you explain me this? Had anyone of you any
experience with this?

Depending on the manufacturer, maxtor, seagate, western digital, etc.. you
can go their site and download a program to make a drive install disk which
you can boot up with to format the drive. Included when you do so is a
thing that will copy and old drive to the new drive. Just make sure both
drives are connected to the computer when you run the boot disk.

If the drive came new out of a box, that disk may be included. If not check
the manufacturer website.

 

[Konrad]

Konrad wrote:

I've just downloaded the DiscWizard from seagate's page, they say it
will the the job, I hope so.
Thank you all once again.

 

[Al Smith]

Hi.

Forgive me my English.
I want to change my system hard drive. I've just bought new hard drive, and I want to replace my old drive with this new one.
But, I want to keep the whole system like it is, by simply copying ALL the contents of the old drive to the new one, that is:
1. I will copy contents of old drive (c:\) to the new drive, I mean all - the system, documents, etc...
2. I will then turn off the computer
3. I will connect the new drive in place of the old one, so the system should start from the new one, yes? The old drive will be simply removed from the PC
4. I will turn on the computer.

I heard this is impossible, but I don't know any reason, why it shouldn't work. Can you explain me this? Had anyone of you any experience with this?

Install the new drive as the "master" boot drive on your primary
IDE channel, and the old drive as slave. Boot from the utility
floppy that came with the new drive (or download it from the drive
maker's Web site and boot from it) to prepare the new drive. It
will give you the option of copying everything from the old drive
to the new drive -- in effect, allowing you to clone the old drive
to the new drive. Then you can just erase what files you want to
erase from the old drive and use it for data storage.

 

[Konrad]

Konrad wrote:
I did it! Cool. And everything's fine, oh, almost.

The "system restore" (I suppose that's how it's named in English), crashes.
I think it is trying to do something according to it's settings, but
since the drives' characteristics changed (like the capacity), it
crashes. So it looks like it's neccesary to reset the settings somehow
from outside the "system restore", yes?
Do you know how to do that? Are the settings kept somewhere in the registry?

 

[Konrad]

Konrad wrote:
I did it! Cool. And everything's fine, oh, almost.

The "system restore" (I suppose that's how it's named in English), crashes.
I think it is trying to do something according to it's settings, but
since the drives' characteristics changed (like the capacity), it
crashes. So it looks like it's neccesary to reset the settings somehow
from outside the "system restore", yes?
Do you know how to do that? Are the settings kept somewhere in the
registry?

I have just tried in Safe Mode, crashes too.

 

[Konrad]

Konrad wrote:

Still didn't find any solution, "System Restore" still crashes, anybody?

 

[Alex Nichol]

I want to change my system hard drive. I've just bought new hard drive,
and I want to replace my old drive with this new one.
But, I want to keep the whole system like it is, by simply copying ALL
the contents of the old drive to the new one, that is:

What I use is BootIT NG, from http://www.BootitNG.com ($35 shareware -
30 day full functional trial)

Download, to its own folder, extract from the zip, run the bootitng to
make a boot floppy.

With the new drive plugged in as slave/secondary, boot the floppy,
Cancel Install, entering maintenance, then click on Partition work.
Highlight your C:,Copy, then on left select the new drive (HD1),
highlight the Free Space in it, and Paste.

You might then consider a resize up a bit. But leave some free space
so as later to make a new separate partition it - don't use the whole of
a big drive as the C system one

Now click on 'View MBR' and in it highlight the entry for this new C
partition and click the 'Set Active' Click 'Write Standard MBR' and
Apply.

Close out, swap the disks to make the new one the one that boots, and
reboot into XP.

 

[Menno Hershberger]

I change it from time to time. Kelly likes to scrutinize them....