hard drive file transfer

  • Thread starter Thread starter Terry Wofford
  • Start date Start date
T

Terry Wofford

Hello, My hard drive crashed but came back up again at
the moment it is working, I purchased a new hard drive
and my question is how do I transfer my files on the old
hard drive to the new one? Is it possible to do this
without reloading all my programs and data or do I need
to do a full backup on cd-r and then restore using the
cd's? Is it possible to copy my windows files to the new
hard drive without going through the hassle of backup and
restore?
Thanks, Terry
 
Hi, Terry.

We deal with this question in one form or another several times a week here.
You should be able to find several discussions of it with just a little bit
of searching.

There are several ways of transferring everything from your old drive to the
new one. New drives usually come with a trial version of software to make
this almost painless. (The drive makers want to sell the drives and this is
a potential roadblock for them, so they try to make it easy so they can make
the sale.) Look in the box for something like Ghost or Drive Image.

If that doesn't work, then there are several other ways. Here's one:

Install your new drive as slave or secondary. Boot into WinXP on your old
drive and start Disk Management. (it's there in WinXP, although many users
haven't found it. Just type at the Run prompt: diskmgmt.msc) Use DM to
partition and format that new drive, making sure that the first (or only)
partition is primary. Assign a temporary drive letter (or letters) to the
new drive. Then open a "DOS" window and use the Xcopy command to copy
everything from the old drive to the new. To get them all, use a command
like:
xcopy C:\ X:\ /c /h /e /r /k, where X: is the (temporary) letter on your new
drive.

Then shut down and unplug the old drive and LEAVE IT OUT of the computer for
now. Install the new drive as primary master. It probably won't boot, but
that's OK for now. Set your computer to boot from the CD drive and insert
the WinXP CD-ROM. Boot into WinXP Setup and run the Repair procedure from
the Recovery Console. Run fixboot and bootcfg to let the RC write the boot
sector onto your new Drive C: and install the proper system files in C:\.
Then remove the CD and you should be able to boot into WinXP on your new
drive, with all your applications and data intact.

AFTER you are up and running with your new WinXP, shut down and install your
old drive as slave or secondary, if you like. You can use DM to repartition
and reformat it and use it as long as you trust it.

If you do have to go the clean install route, then backup just your DATA
before you begin. No need to backup WinXP itself, because you will be
installing it clean from the CD. No need to backup your applications,
because you'll have to install them again, anyhow. Simply having their
files in place is not enough; they have to be installed so that they can
make the proper entries in your (new) Registry.

Besides, a CD-R holds only about 700 MB. How many do you think it would
take to back up a 40 GB HD?

RC
 
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