New XP Pro Installation

[\a:\\\]

I'm just curious if this would work. I've got a ghost image of my pc. If
down the road, I buy a new pc, can I image the drive using the ghost image
from the old pc.

The chipset would be different, but I'm wondering if I image the pc and run
windows repair, would that be enough? I would prefer not to reimage from
scratch as it is many hours of work to reinstall all the software and fine
tune it.

Thanks

 

[Malke]

I'm just curious if this would work. I've got a ghost image of my pc.
If down the road, I buy a new pc, can I image the drive using the
ghost image from the old pc.

The chipset would be different, but I'm wondering if I image the pc
and run
windows repair, would that be enough? I would prefer not to reimage
from scratch as it is many hours of work to reinstall all the software
and fine tune it.

Thanks

No, that will not work unless the new pc has exactly the same hardware
as the old one.

Malke

 

[\a:\\\]

When I purchased my recent computer, the technican told me there was a way
of simply moving the hard drive from the old to the new pc without having to
image it. He said it was elaborate but didn't get into details.

I kind of regret not getting details from him, but am wondering if he was
incorrect or if there is some obscure way of doing this.

 

[Tim Slattery]

When I purchased my recent computer, the technican told me there was a way
of simply moving the hard drive from the old to the new pc without having to
image it. He said it was elaborate but didn't get into details.

I kind of regret not getting details from him, but am wondering if he was
incorrect or if there is some obscure way of doing this.

You can open the case of the old computer and remove the drive. You'll
need to unscrew some screws, and unplug two plugs (a wide one for
data, and a narrower one for power). You can then install that drive
into the new computer as a secondary drive (I assume that's what
you're talking about), by (basically) reversing the process.

Here's a page that talks about installing hard drives, there are
zillions of others.
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=1059

 

[Malke]

When I purchased my recent computer, the technican told me there was a
way of simply moving the hard drive from the old to the new pc without
having to
image it. He said it was elaborate but didn't get into details.

I kind of regret not getting details from him, but am wondering if he
was incorrect or if there is some obscure way of doing this.

Since I wasn't there to hear him, I can't say for certain, but from your
description, he was just wrong. Here are some data transfer scenarios:

1. You have a working computer and you decide to replace the hard drive.
Maybe it's too small or you feel it's dying - whatever. You buy a new
hard drive. If it's a retail version, it will come with a floppy with
utilities on it. If it's whitebox, you can download the same utilities
from the drive mftr.'s website. You slave the new hard drive in your
computer and boot with the utility - you can then copy your old drive
completely to your new drive. Then you remove the old drive and put the
new drive in as master. This works when the only thing you've changed
is the drive. You might have to reactivate Windows (I did when I did
this procedure last week), but that's no biggie.

2. You have a working drive and you use third-party imaging software
like Norton Ghost or Drive Image to make an image, which you save
somewhere other than on the same drive. Then, if you mess up your
installation, you can quickly restore it with the image. This may not
work if you replace the drive because of drive geometry, but you'd have
to check on that. I'm sure it worked with Win9x/ME but I've not done it
with XP.

3. You use XP's File & Transfer Wizard with the proper cabling or over a
network. This just transfers your files and settings onto a different
XP installation - it doesn't copy the entire disk as in #1 and #2
above.

4. You slave the old drive in the new machine and copy data across as
outlined to you in my first post.

HTH,

Malke