Uncle Grumpy said:
Install the new drive as the second drive following the manufacturer's
instructions, then clone the system drive to it using one of many
alternatives (google "disk cloning software". If your drive came with
such software, follow the manufacturers instructions.
When you are done, install the new drive as "C" and do whatever you
with your old drive.
Patrick Keenan said:
Get a new larger drive (here, 500 gig drives are just over $100, 80 gig
are under $50) and attach it to the system. Then get imaging software
and clone the C drive to the new drive. You do *not* need to partition
or format or assign drive letters to the new drive first.
You'll probably need to clear some space, but you can download the Acronis
TrueImage trial, or the Seagate utility. They are both around 100 meg.
If you use the Acronis TrueImage trial, "back up" the drive in manual
mode, as this will allow you to tell TrueImage to use all or some of the
space on the target drive.
When you're done, shut the system down, remove the C drive, and put the
new drive in its place. Leave the C drive out, and restart the system.
The system should boot normally. If you wish to, you can then power
back down and reinstall the old C drive to another connector - it' won't
be C anymore.
HTH
-pkj
popadave said:
Thank you both, Uncle Grumpy, and Patrick for your responces to my
question. First off, there is in my PC two hard drives (C and D) plus a
CD-ROM drive and a DVD drive. Not a lot of room for me to install another
drive for cloning data to or from. The data I want to protect is, at this
time, copied to the 80gb D drive for safekeeping. A close friend of mine
will be doing the actual work of installing the new drive with my somewhat
limited assistance (I'm disabled, with only one side to work with.) If I
were to just replace the C drive with a new larger newly formatted disk
and buy a new Windows XP Home Ed. disk (the system I have is OEM, with the
original config on a partitioned E drive, part of the C drive,) would that
work? The C and D drives are both NTFS and the E drive is FAT32. I would
admit that I would have to reinstall all my programs after installing the
Windows XP Home disk, a lengthy business, but worth it in the end if it
works. Please respond.
popadave
popadave:
May I suggest the following approach for you to consider, perhaps just
"fleshing out" as it were the info you rec'd from "Uncle Grumpy" and Patrick
Keenan?...
Before we go any further please understand that we're assuming that your
present 40 GB HDD is non-defective, the system boots without incident, and
functions without any problems affecting the XP OS. If this be *not* be the
case, go no further...
1. You will be purchasing a new, larger HDD that you want to serve as your
day-to-day boot drive. After doing so, have your friend uninstall your
present secondary 80 GB HDD from your system. (If you can, be sure to look
over his shoulder as he performs this operation and all the subsequent ones
we're going to discuss).
2. Then he will install your new, larger HDD in place of the 80 GB HDD.
3. Now here's where the disk-cloning process comes into play. Using a
disk-to-disk cloning program such as the Acronis one mentioned by Patrick or
the Seagate utility (which is a version of the Acronis True Image program
but as far as I know will work only if one of the drives involved in the
disk-cloning process is a Seagate HDD) you, or your friend will "clone" the
contents from your present 40 GB HDD over to your new HDD. As Uncle G.
indicated you can also use the disk-copying utility available from the
manufacturer of your new HDD. This utility is included with boxed, retail
versions of the manufacturer's HDD but is usually also freely available from
the web site of the disk's manufacturer. This includes the Seagate utility
previously mentioned.
4. As a consequence of this disk-cloning process your new HDD will be a copy
of your present boot drive - in effect a copy of that drive containing its
complete contents including the XP OS, all programs & applications, and your
user-created data.
5. Following the successful disk-cloning operation your friend (you're still
watching, right?) will connect that newly-cloned new HDD as Primary Master
in your system (replacing, of course, the old 40 GB one). He, or she, will
then install your 80 GB HDD back in its place as a secondary HDD.
(I suppose you can keep around your old 40 GB HDD as a spare, at least for
some time. Since, as you mentioned, it's a 5400 rpm disk, it's really "seen
its day" but since it (apparently) is non-defective & functional there's
some reason to retain it at this time. You might even want to consider
installing it as an external HDD in a USB external enclosure using that
device as a supplementary backup device.)
Just a few words about a disk-to-disk cloning program.
This is something you should really consider for the future now that you
will have two reasonably large HDDs installed as internal drives in your
system. A disk-cloning program such as the ones discussed are a valuable
(actually in my mind indispensable) tool for establishing & maintaining a
comprehensive backup system that you can employ on a routine basis.
While the ones discussed are generally reliable & effective programs
(although I have to admit we've run into problems with the Seagate
DiscWizard program in the past and no longer use that program, but I'm not
sure whether it has been updated since it's been some time since we last
used it), the particular one that we highly recommend for users is the
Casper 4.0 program because it is simple to use and quite effective. It is,
however, not a "freebie". As a matter of fact it's more expensive than most
other commercial disk-cloning programs. But we feel that it's such a fine
program in carrying out routine disk-to-disk cloning operations so as to
maintain a comprehensive backup program as noted above, that it's easily
worth the additional cost. Anyway, if you or anyone coming upon this thread
is interested in more details about that program I'll be glad to post them.
(I've posted detailed information on that program a number of times in this
and other XP newsgroups).
Anna
