New Hard Drive

[Alan]

All,

Bought a new Western Digital 120GB internal, it is
assigned the drive letter F:\. What I want to do is back
up my C:\ to it (C:\ is 13GB, pretty full). Someone at
work suggested Norton Ghost to do image the C:\ and to
partition the new drive. Is this the way to go? Or if you
can point me to a resource to read up about this stuff,
I'd appreciate it.

 

[Sharon F]

All,

Bought a new Western Digital 120GB internal, it is
assigned the drive letter F:\. What I want to do is back
up my C:\ to it (C:\ is 13GB, pretty full). Someone at
work suggested Norton Ghost to do image the C:\ and to
partition the new drive. Is this the way to go? Or if you
can point me to a resource to read up about this stuff,
I'd appreciate it.

Set it up whatever is best for you. Your idea sounds good though and is
similar to what I've done. I use a different imaging program but have set
up my second drive with two partitions: one for data storage. The other is
for items of a backup nature: images, a folder of files waiting to be
burned, PST backup, backups of more limited data sets, etc. Besides the
image on the second hard drive, I create a second image on DVD media. If
the second hard does not fail, it's very easy to restore from. If it does fail,
I still have an image on hand.

 

[Alex Nichol]

Bought a new Western Digital 120GB internal, it is
assigned the drive letter F:\. What I want to do is back
up my C:\ to it (C:\ is 13GB, pretty full). Someone at
work suggested Norton Ghost to do image the C:\ and to
partition the new drive.

What I would do is use is BootIT NG, from http://www.BootitNG.com ($35
shareware - 30 day full functional trial) which while it started as a
boot manager, is an excellent and good value partition manager too

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) and
Paste.

You might then consider a resize up a bit. I would not myself go over
16GB though for C - rather make a second partition and move data
folders, especially My Doucument/My Music/My whatever onto it. You make
a new partition initially in BING, but I would leave it and do it
after, once XP is rebooted, using its Control Panel - Admin Tools -
Computer Management, select Disk Management and look lower right for the
graphic of the drive.R-click in that and create partition

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.. Make a working data partition as above, and you might
keep the former C: (which will get a new letter) and use it as a place
to store a compressed image (also can be made with BING) of your new C
as a solid backup.