New Hard Drive

[Guest]

I want to upgrade to a bigger hd, would I be able to install my copy of XP
onto the new drive?

 

[GHalleck]

I want to upgrade to a bigger hd, would I be able to install my copy of XP
onto the new drive?

Yes. The process is known as "cloning". Two popular applications for
doing this are Symantec Ghost and Acronis TrueImage.

 

[Noncompliant]

Hesitate to state "yes" or "no".
Don't know what capacity hard drive you have now, your bios ability for 48
bit lba, what size hard drive you intend to get, and if you have XP, XP
w/SP1, or XP w/SP2.

And, there may be more to it if there's a hidden restore partition on the
original hard drive.

 

[Raoul]

I did something similar last fall, but rather than reinstall the OS, I just
installed the bigger HD as a 'slave' and moved all 'my personal data' over
to the new drive.

That does have some added benefits because if my PC ever dies and I have to
get a new one, all I have to do is remove the HD with all my data on it and
install it on my new machine.

Just some thoughts.

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

I want to upgrade to a bigger hd, would I be able to install my copy
of XP onto the new drive?

Are you asking about the licensing issue? Whether you are permitted to
reinstall Windows XP onto the new drive?

Yes, you are permitted to do that. You will have to reactivate after
reinstalling, but that's not a problem.

There are two other possibilities you may want to consider:

1. Don't reinstall WIndows from scratch, but clone your existing drive onto
the new one, using a program like Acronis True Iamge.

2. Install your second drive alongside the first one, instead of replacing
the old one. Keep Windows on the old drive and use the new drive for
additional storage.

Unless there's some compelling reason to replace the old one, I would
suggest alternative 2, which is the easier way to go.

 

[Guest]

So the XP licensing argeement allows another installation for the same pc on
a new hd?

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

So the XP licensing argeement allows another installation for the
same pc on a new hd?

Assuming that the original installation is removed, yes.

You may change hardware of any kind as much as you want, and reinstall, as
often as you want. If yours is a retail copy of Windows, you may even change
the entire computer, remove Wnndows from the old computer and reinstall it
on the new one. The only restriction is that you may not have it installed
on more than one computer or drive at the same time.

If yours is an OEM copy, an additional restriction applies: its license ties
it permanently to the first computer its installed on. It may never be moved
to another computer or sold or given away by itself. You can change
components (the hard drive, for example), but not the entire computer.