What's the right way to transfer system to new HDD?

[tom sowa]

I'm looking for the simplest way to take my existing XP
Pro installation and load it to a new, larger HDD.
Ghost or clone?
Or must I first install XP on the new drive, then migrate
my old settings, favorites, system config files, etc?

mucho...

 

[David]

I posted a similar message in the hardware forum, no ones
replied yet. BUT, I'm in the exact situation you're in
and I formatted my new sata HD then used ghost to copy
everything. When I restarteed, windows got past the
loading screen then just stops and does nothing else
with "windows xp" displayed on a blue background.
couldn't figure it out so I just reinstalled windows but
norton and some other programs won't work :-( think I hve
to reinstall them and all the service packs etc.

 

[Guest]

That's kinda why I want to do more research on this one.

Once you install XP on a drive, it sort of establishes
its own file allocation system and other settings. Trying
to simply transfer the whole schmeer to a new drive tends
not to work. At least that's my experience.

Hoping some brainiac 'splains how to do this right...

 

[I'm Dan]

I posted a similar message in the hardware forum,
no ones replied yet. BUT, I'm in the exact situation
you're in and I formatted my new sata HD then
used ghost to copy everything. When I restarteed,
windows got past the loading screen then just
stops and does nothing else with "windows xp"
displayed on a blue background.

The "right way" would have been *not* to format the new HDD
beforehand -- let Ghost do it during the cloning. You don't want to
give XP a chance to give the new HDD a drive letter before the cloning
operation, and you don't want the new XP to see the old XP the first
time it boots up.

At this point, a Win98 boot floppy may work to fix things back up.
Remove the old HDD, install new HDD as master, boot from a Win98 boot
floppy (download one from www.bootdisk.com if you need to), execute the
command "fdisk /mbr", remove the floppy, and reboot from the new HDD.
Note the similar "fixmbr" command from the XP recovery console will not
work -- you must use a DOS/Win9x version of fdisk. If all goes well, XP
should come up as C:. You can subsequently reinstall the old HDD, but
only after first getting the system back up and running as a one-HDD
system.

 

[Hans-Georg Michna]

I'm looking for the simplest way to take my existing XP
Pro installation and load it to a new, larger HDD.
Ghost or clone?
Or must I first install XP on the new drive, then migrate
my old settings, favorites, system config files, etc?

Tom,

please have a look at http://www.michna.com/kb/WxMove.htm.

Hans-Georg

 

[David]

You can subsequently reinstall the old HDD, but
only after first getting the system back up and running as
a one-HDD
system.

That's what I ended up doing and now ALMSOT everything
is working. Everytime I install the SATA drivers my
system hanges at mup.sys when I boot to safe mode or just
gives me a black screen on boot. That and I now have to
transfer all my files and settings but it's doing that
part ok now. Network was giving me all kinds of issues
too but I can access the internet now so I'm gonna
download SP1 and updates then see what happens? At least
Call of Duty works

 

[Guest]

Another offline message I got told me to do the
following. does this sound right?

Use Drive Image (or Ghost) and add the new HDD as a
slave. Copy the current Master disk to the new HDD. Shut
down. Move the slave to the Master position, take out the
master drive. Boot up. The previous Installation should
now be there.

Good?

 

[Hans-Georg Michna]

Hans-Georg Michna wrote:

Another offline message I got told me to do the
following. does this sound right?

Use Drive Image (or Ghost) and add the new HDD as a
slave. Copy the current Master disk to the new HDD. Shut
down. Move the slave to the Master position, take out the
master drive. Boot up. The previous Installation should
now be there.

Good?

Well, it's the same recommendation again, sharply abbreviated
and without mentioning the alternatives. Apart from that I
obviously think it's good.

Hans-Georg