New Harddrive

[Guest]

A co-worker wants to upgrade his harddrive on an existing pc running XPHome
SP2. Is there a way to transfer all the data (OS, et al) to the new
harrdrive from his existing hdd without having to reinstall, etc?
Thanks in advance,

 

[R. McCarty]

Yes, with qualifications.

Most retail boxed drives will come with a program to "Clone" an
existing drive to the new one. One potential problem is resizing.
If the original drive is a single partition (C:\) at say 20.0 Gigabytes
and the new drive is 80.0 Gigabytes, the cloning may not allow you
to increase the destination partition size. This might defeat the
reason for upgrading to a larger drive.

For resizing you would need a 3rd party Disk Management tool,
such as Partition Magic, BootITNg.

The process for cloning is usually done outside of Windows, via
a boot Floppy or CD disk. You'll need to set jumpers on the disks
(Master, Slave or Cable Select). Not a complicated process, but
one that needs close attention to details.

 

[Anna]

message news:[email protected]...

Yes, with qualifications.

Most retail boxed drives will come with a program to "Clone" an
existing drive to the new one. One potential problem is resizing.
If the original drive is a single partition (C:\) at say 20.0 Gigabytes
and the new drive is 80.0 Gigabytes, the cloning may not allow you
to increase the destination partition size. This might defeat the
reason for upgrading to a larger drive.

For resizing you would need a 3rd party Disk Management tool,
such as Partition Magic, BootITNg.

The process for cloning is usually done outside of Windows, via
a boot Floppy or CD disk. You'll need to set jumpers on the disks
(Master, Slave or Cable Select). Not a complicated process, but
one that needs close attention to details.

Terry:
As Mr. McCarty points out, the contents of the old drive can be cloned to
the new one by using the disk-to-disk cloning utility provided by the HD
manufacturer in their retail boxed versions. The utility is nearly always
available from the manufacturer's website as well. It's relatively easy to
use, but fairly slow in its cloning operation. But if this is for a one-time
transfer of data as is your objective, that's not a major problem. Using
that utility for routine cloning for systematic backup purposes is not
practical. For that, one would want a disk imaging program, e.g., Symantec's
Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image, etc.

Note to Mr. McCarty:
I'm not sure I understand your reference to a potential problem re
"resizing". In the example you give, the contents of a 20 GB HD are being
cloned to a 80 GB HD. Why would this pose a problem? Why would the
"destination partition size" (of that 80 GB drive) have to be increased? But
perhaps I misunderstand what you are saying.
Anna

 

[R. McCarty]

Anna,

It's been a while since I've used any of the vendor tools. I was trying
to illustrate that moving to a new drive is to obtain more space. Doing
a "Clone" operation doesn't imply making a partition bigger on the
destination drive. If he had 19.2 Gig of 20.0 used and he clones the
20.0 to an 80.0 that doesn't necessarily give him 19.2 of 80 used.
In other words, I wanted to make clear that not all cloning software
tools allow for resizing as part of the clone process. Many times a
user will do the clone and not understand why there is still some disk
space left unallocated or their XP partition hasn't changed to include
the new drives total size. I still use Partition Magic or sometimes the
disk to disk copy of the older Drive Image program.

 

[Anna]

Anna,

It's been a while since I've used any of the vendor tools. I was trying
to illustrate that moving to a new drive is to obtain more space. Doing
a "Clone" operation doesn't imply making a partition bigger on the
destination drive. If he had 19.2 Gig of 20.0 used and he clones the
20.0 to an 80.0 that doesn't necessarily give him 19.2 of 80 used.
In other words, I wanted to make clear that not all cloning software
tools allow for resizing as part of the clone process. Many times a
user will do the clone and not understand why there is still some disk
space left unallocated or their XP partition hasn't changed to include
the new drives total size. I still use Partition Magic or sometimes the
disk to disk copy of the older Drive Image program.

Mr. McCarty:
Not to belabor this issue, but let me make this point...
Using any run-of-the-mill disk imaging, i.e., cloning, tool such as Norton
Ghost or Acronis True Image, if the user clones his 20 GB drive, which in
your example contains 19.2 GB of data to a 80 GB drive, then the 80 GB drive
will contain 19.2 GB of data. There will be *no* "unallocated space" on the
80 GB drive following the cloning operation, i.e., disk space that needs to
be partitioned/formatted.

If the user desired multiple partitions on his destination drive, in this
case the 80 GB one (assuming that drive started out with a single
partition), then he or she would first multi-partition the drive following
which he/she could clone the contents of his/her source disk to this or that
partition. So if, for example, the user partitioned his/her 80 GB drive with
30 GB and 50 GB partitions and then cloned the 19.2 GB from the source disk
to the 30 GB partition, there would simply be 19.2 GB of data on that 30 GB
partition, again, with no "unallocated space" that needs
partitioning/formatting.

Are we in agreement on this?
Anna

 

[Guest]

Thanks to all for the input...the drive I will be transferring to did not
come with software so I will check their website. Will also download
Parition Magic as I already have BootINTg and found it confusing (a bad sign,
I know).

You'll probably be hearing from me again when I get into the transfer...

Thanks again,