Replacing Hard Drive

[Guest]

Current system: Win XP Home SP2, AMD Athlon(tm) 64 processor, 3400+, 2.20
GHz, 1.00 GB of RAM, 200 GB Western Digital hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce FX
5900XT display adapter, SONY CD-RW CRX-230E, SONY DVD RW DW-U18A, Creative SB
Audigy 2 sound system

I am having hard drive problems with a number of recent bad sectors
developing that suggests the drive may be beginning to fail. I have backups
of all critical data. I would like to replace the drive with a larger one
but do a fresh install of Win XP Home (and program files) on the new drive
rather than use a disk imaging technique to clone the old drive. In other
words, I want Win XP Home on the new drive which I will partition with
Partition Magic then reinstall the programs I want and copy the backed-up
data files. I plan to have two partitions on the new drive - one for the OS
and program files and the other for data. This is the present configuration
of the old drive. Is there a step -by-step tutorial available for this
procedure or is there a better strategy? Thanks.

 

[steam3801]

Current system: Win XP Home SP2, AMD Athlon(tm) 64 processor, 3400+, 2.20
GHz, 1.00 GB of RAM, 200 GB Western Digital hard drive, NVIDIA GeForce FX
5900XT display adapter, SONY CD-RW CRX-230E, SONY DVD RW DW-U18A, Creative SB
Audigy 2 sound system

I am having hard drive problems with a number of recent bad sectors
developing that suggests the drive may be beginning to fail. I have backups
of all critical data. I would like to replace the drive with a larger one
but do a fresh install of Win XP Home (and program files) on the new drive
rather than use a disk imaging technique to clone the old drive. In other
words, I want Win XP Home on the new drive which I will partition with
Partition Magic then reinstall the programs I want and copy the backed-up
data files. I plan to have two partitions on the new drive - one for the OS
and program files and the other for data. This is the present configuration
of the old drive. Is there a step -by-step tutorial available for this
procedure or is there a better strategy? Thanks.

You really don't need much more detail than tyhe steps you've outlined
above.

However, a better "strategy" might be to consider 2 HDD instead of one
large one. If either one crashes you only have to either re-install or
copy, not both if the 1 HDD is partitioned.

This is an even better suggestion when you consider you don't have to
use PM which has gone downhill totally since Symantec bought it out.

 

[John Barnes]

Sounds like a good plan to me. You will need to reactivate, but if you have
a retail version that shouldn't be a problem. Never try to image a failing
drive, even if it works, odds are you will have problems down the road.

 

[DL]

Since you are clean installing, why do you need PM? since the wincd has all
the tools to partition/format, single or multiple partitions.
If your wincd is actually pre sp1 (I know you show sp2 installed) the large
hd will not be identified

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the input. I'm not committed to PM. It's just that I have been
using it successfully for many years and I feel comfortable with it.

One other question. How do I determine the actual number of bad sectors on
the drive?

 

[DL]

The HD manu, diagnostic tool may help, available free on their site.
However if the disk shows bad sectors you would be advised to dump it