Hard Drive Upgrade

  • Thread starter Thread starter Steve
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Steve

Could anybody tell me if you can copy the contents of one
hardrive to another? I'm upgrading to a new HD and would
like to use it as my main drive and format old one to use
as a backup drive.

Thanks in advance
 
Could anybody tell me if you can copy the contents of one
hardrive to another? I'm upgrading to a new HD and would
like to use it as my main drive and format old one to use
as a backup drive.

Thanks in advance
Click to expand...

Yes it can be done. I used a program called Drive Copy by PowerQuest to do
mine recently. Upgraded from a 6 gig to a 40 gig hard drive with no
problems. The extra 34 gigs was left as free space for me to partition as
I wanted.
 
-----Original Message-----
Could anybody tell me if you can copy the contents of one
hardrive to another? I'm upgrading to a new HD and would
like to use it as my main drive and format old one to use
as a backup drive.

Thanks in advance
.
It sounds like you might be talking about 2 different
Click to expand...
tasks. If you make your new HD the primary you will need
to install the OS onto that drive. Once you have
formated and installed the OS onto that drive you can
then "slave" your old drive and still have access to all
of the files on that drive.
I am assuming that your current file system is FAT or
FAT32 and not NTFS. That doesn't make the task impossible
but it can make things a bit more "touchy".
Good luck.

Rexbo
 
Steve, many of the HD vendors have their SW utility to
copy over the drive 'image'. However, sometimes the SW is
good and sometimes not... I typically perform a 'clean
slate' install on such an occassion, and create a 'Backup'
Partition on the new HD ahead of time, copying my files
and the Windows .cab files as well. This process is
manual, required you to add the second drive in the BIOS,
and set it up w/ SW tools or FDISK for the partition sizes
you desire. I can step you through it a little deeper if
you like! Please hit me on e-mail, as I might not be back
to the forum for a while...

Hope this helps!
 
You can use Norton Ghost to create a exact copy of your
hardrive... then you can format the old one for backup
purpose... its a small application you can run on the
console of your Operating system... I suggest you exit
windows and go to the DOS mode to do this for safety
reason...
 
Steve said:
Could anybody tell me if you can copy the contents of one
hardrive to another? I'm upgrading to a new HD and would
like to use it as my main drive and format old one to use
as a backup drive.
Click to expand...

The simplest way is to use a simple disk copy utility from the drive
manufacturer. Many manufacturers (Seagate, WD, Maxtor, to name a few --
though not IBM/Hitachi) have free software specifically for your
intended purpose. If you don't get a floppy disk with your new HD, you
can often download it from the manufacturer's website. To use, it's as
simple as plugging in both HD's, boot from the floppy, copy one HD to
the other, remove old HD, put new HD in its place, and reboot. Do not
install the new HD first and try to format it with XP; just put it in
bare and boot the utility floppy. (Many people make this mistake, which
gives XP a chance to give the new HD a different drive letter, which can
screw things up.)

Very important: do *not* leave the old HD installed as a slave when you
first boot the new HD. Get the system back up and running with the new
HD by itself first. After the new HD is running properly as a single-HD
system, you may reformat and install the old HD as a slave if you want.
 
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