Best way to upgrade system drive?

  • Thread starter Thread starter jaypelham
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J

jaypelham

Hi! I just ordered a 160GB HD to replace the 30GB system drive in my
Dell Dimension 2400 desktop PC. I was wondering what is the best way
for me to clone the system drive, making the 160GB the primary
drive?

Thanks!
Jay
 
Maybe buy a HD enclosure for the older 30 GB and install the new 160 GB into
the mother board then reinstall XP on the new HD.

If it works you can also then use the older 30 GB to backup DATA files
 
jaypelham said:
Hi! I just ordered a 160GB HD to replace the 30GB system drive in my
Dell Dimension 2400 desktop PC. I was wondering what is the best way
for me to clone the system drive, making the 160GB the primary
drive?

Thanks!
Jay
Click to expand...

Moat disk come with (or have available on mfg's home page) a program to just
that.

The process is simple: (jumper and )connect new drive as slave, boot from
floppy/CD with the cloning program, clone disk (absolute/proportional/manual
sizing), REMOVE old disk, jumper and connect new disk as master, boot.
If all is OK, should boot w/o problems..
Use for a few days to make sure it's working. If yes, now you can connect
old disk (jumpered as slave), format and use for backups etc..

The procedure is the same with 3rd pty disk cloning programs.
With imaging programs you need a 3rd disk (internal/USB/FW or CD/DVD) to
store the image on, but mostly the same

--
Tumppi
=================================
A lot learned from these newsgroups
Helsinki, FINLAND
(translations from/to FI not always accurate
=================================
 
Chances are you have a "recovery partition" on that Dell drive that has your
OS on it as well as all of the programs that came with your
Dell.........unless they actually gave you recovery CD's.
If it was my machine I would connect that new drive as a slave to the main
HD.EIDE controllers can handle having 2 devices connected to each.You might
require the appropriate cable but any computer store can sell you one.
On the back of your new drive are jumpers that would require you to set to
slave.....the slave drive goes on the middle connection of the cable...the
master at the end.
once installed go to Admin.Tools/computer management/disk managemnt and
format the drive.This will make it useable.At this point you could
copy/paste all of your personal files to a folder on the new drive.You also
could set IE cache and Outlook mailbox to the new drive via their Tools
options.All future new programs can be installed to the new drive.This is
less hassle than the cloning of one drive to another...something can go
wrong and your looking at a reinstall or a repair installation.
This assumes that you actually have 2 EIDE controllers..one for HD's another
for CD/DVD.Dell can be really cheap in this regard.
peter
 
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