Transferring Windows to new hard drive

[Brian Raymond]

Hi,
I don't know whether I have a problem or not. I have XP
installed on my 40gb hard drive at pesent and have just
bought a 160 GB Hard drive which I would like to make my
Master drive. The way I plan to do this is to put the
160 GB drive into my computer as a Slave and copy all the
information from the current Master, the 40gb drive, onto
the new drive - then make the 160gb drive the Master and
remove the 40gb drive from the computer.

My basic question is, will my plan described above work,
and if not, how should I proceed? I have reservations in
that I understand that XP can only be loaded once. Will
my olan work or not?

Brian R

 

[Richard Urban]

That is not the way to do it. Get yourself a copy of Drive Image 7.01 or
Ghost 2003. These programs are made to do specifically what you want to do,
copy/clone a partition to another hard drive. Doing it your way, the new
drive will not be bootable.

--
Regards:

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard

 

[Guest]

That will work

Get a transfer program from your Drive Maker free. Most
will only work with their drive.


IBM/HITACHI:

http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

MAXTOR:

http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/index.htm

SEAGATE:

http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html


WESTERN DIGITAL:

http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp

 

[Richard Urban]

It will not work - period!

He plans to copy. You can NOT copy open/in use files to another hard drive.
The drive will be severely lacking in the files necessary to boot the
computer.

--
Regards:

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

In

Hi,
I don't know whether I have a problem or not. I have XP
installed on my 40gb hard drive at pesent and have just
bought a 160 GB Hard drive which I would like to make my
Master drive. The way I plan to do this is to put the
160 GB drive into my computer as a Slave and copy all the
information from the current Master, the 40gb drive, onto
the new drive - then make the 160gb drive the Master and
remove the 40gb drive from the computer.

My basic question is, will my plan described above work,

Yes it will work, but you need to the copy with a program such as
Ghost or DriveImage. Regular copying won't work.

and if not, how should I proceed? I have reservations in
that I understand that XP can only be loaded once. Will
my olan work or not?

It is *not* true that XP can only be loaded once. You can
reinstall as many times as you want or need to, although you'll
have to reactivate when you do. But reactivation is not a
problem.

 

[Alex Nichol]

I don't know whether I have a problem or not. I have XP
installed on my 40gb hard drive at pesent and have just
bought a 160 GB Hard drive which I would like to make my
Master drive. The way I plan to do this is to put the
160 GB drive into my computer as a Slave and copy all the
information from the current Master, the 40gb drive, onto
the new drive - then make the 160gb drive the Master and
remove the 40gb drive from the computer.

My basic question is, will my plan described above work,
and if not, how should I proceed?

First - do *not* try to do it by any means that just copy files. You
need to use a method that will make an exact byte for byte copy of the
existing partition. There is an extra complicating factor here that the
new drive, being over 137G decimal billion = 128 G of the binary G used
in partitioning, needs to use '48 bit LBA' to address the sectors on the
drive even at the most basic level. That needs a BIOS and controllers
on the motherboard that handle this (quite a recent one) as well as XP
SP1 in place, or it will use the older 28 bit LBA and limit access to
the drive, at all, to that 128 G - as many sectors as 28 bits can
address.

Aside from that point, which needs checking in advance, What I use is
BootIT NG, from http://www.BootitNG.com ($35 shareware - 30 day full
functional trial)

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, but I would *not* use
anything like the whole of such a big drive as C. You could subsequently
make extra partitions on the drive with XP itself

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.