XP from HDD to HDD

[Boone]

I'm out of room on my existing hard drive. It's a 30GB drive partitioned
into 25GB and 5GB partitions, with XP Pro SP 2, programs and everything else
installed on the larger partition and a backup file on the smaller one.

I slaved an 80GB drive to the existing one to put music and so forth on, but
each saved e-mail, each bit of saved QuickBooks data adds to the amount of
data that will soon make the existing installation too full to use.

I need to achieve a proper, working installation of XP, the programs and all
the rest on the 80GB drive to get out of this fix.

Is it possible or advisable to just move the existing operating system,
programs and all from one hard drive to the other?

Is one better off backing up Outlook, QuickBooks and so forth, creating a
fresh install of XP and the programs on the 80GB disc and importing the
backups?

Does one need to change master/slave positions on the EIDE ribbon, and, if
so, at what point in the procedure?

Which direction is recommended, and how is it recommended one get from A to B?

(iWill KK266R, 1.4 GHz Athlon, 384 MB PC 133 SDRAM, 16MB Voodoo 3, Creative
Sound Blaster, 30GB Western Digital Caviar EIDE, 80GB Western Digital Caviar
EIDE, Plextor CD writer, floppy, Windows XP Professional SP2)

Great thanks for any help,

 

[Art]

I'm out of room on my existing hard drive. It's a 30GB drive partitioned
into 25GB and 5GB partitions, with XP Pro SP 2, programs and everything else
installed on the larger partition and a backup file on the smaller one.

I slaved an 80GB drive to the existing one to put music and so forth on, but
each saved e-mail, each bit of saved QuickBooks data adds to the amount of
data that will soon make the existing installation too full to use.

I need to achieve a proper, working installation of XP, the programs and all
the rest on the 80GB drive to get out of this fix.

Is it possible or advisable to just move the existing operating system,
programs and all from one hard drive to the other?

Is one better off backing up Outlook, QuickBooks and so forth, creating a
fresh install of XP and the programs on the 80GB disc and importing the
backups?

Does one need to change master/slave positions on the EIDE ribbon, and, if
so, at what point in the procedure?

Which direction is recommended, and how is it recommended one get from A to B?

(iWill KK266R, 1.4 GHz Athlon, 384 MB PC 133 SDRAM, 16MB Voodoo 3, Creative
Sound Blaster, 30GB Western Digital Caviar EIDE, 80GB Western Digital Caviar
EIDE, Plextor CD writer, floppy, Windows XP Professional SP2)

Great thanks for any help,

You can easily clone your 25 gb Windows boot partition to the 80 gb
drive with the idea of making the 80 gb drive your new Windows
boot drive ... if that's what you want to do. The free version of
XXCLONE will do this, and under its "Cool Tools" you can make the
80 gb drive bootable.

http://www.xxclone.com/

Whether or not your ribbon cable requires a particular connector
on it for the master varies. The best bet is to use the connector
that's now the master later on when you're ready to boot from
the 80 gb drive. At that point, swap over and connect the
smaller drive to the slave position. Also, make sure the jumpers on
the drives are located properly according to the instructions printed
on the drives. The 80 gb drive will later become the master, and
the smaller drive the slave. But of course you first do the cloning
with the 80 gb drive as slave .. which it is now, presumably.

Remember that cloning will remove everything from the 80 gb
drive that isn't on the 25 gb partition. You may want to first
partition the 80 gb drive into two partitions.

Art

 

[Boone]

Hey, Art;

Thanks for the clue! I didn't know about 3rd party cloning programs. I
appreciate that.

 

[Art]

Hey, Art;

Thanks for the clue! I didn't know about 3rd party cloning programs. I
appreciate that.

You're welcome. XXCLONE is a file copier/cloner that I've used a lot
over past couple of years, and it has never missed a beat. The free
version that I use lacks what's called incremental cloning ... meaning
that every time you use it it does a unconditional clone of all files
and folders. With the paid version and incremental cloning, only
files and folders that have changed since the last clone are copied.
This allows for fast updating of a prior cloning. Again, since you're
not used to using cloners I'll repeat the warning: You must
understand that anything on the target drive that's not on the
source drive will be deleted. It's not a backup operation, in other
words. Of course it's a "backup" in the sense that you can create
a identical set of files and folders on a different drive and use the
target drive as a backup. So beware of the terminology used as
well.

Art

 

[Art]

Again, since you're
not used to using cloners I'll repeat the warning: You must
understand that anything on the target drive that's not on the
source drive will be deleted.

Correction. I should have said "partition" instead of "drive". Other
partitions on the target aren't touched. Only the target partition.

Art