How do I copy my C: drive to a bigger HD?

[John Brock]

I want to replace my current PATA HD with a larger SATA HD. My PC
has an empty drive bay, and I know how to install a new drive.
What's not clear is how to copy everything from my old drive to
the new one and make the new drive my bootable C: drive. So I have
a few questions:

1) I assume there are programs for doing this sort of thing. Any
recommendations? Anything to steer clear of? (Anything I don't
have to pay money for?

2) My PC has one of those setups where, rather than giving you a
bunch of backup CDs, the files needed to restore the system to its
factory state are all saved on a hidden partition, accessible via
a restore utility that is also located on the hidden partition.
(The PC is an IBM/Lenovo ThinkCentre M50 8187, if that helps).
I'm not thrilled with this setup, but if possible I'd prefer not
to break it, so whatever copy product I use should copy absolutely
*everything* from the old disk to the new one, hidden partitions
and all. Will this be a problem?

3) Are there any gotchas that I need to be aware of? Any helpful
warnings would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Rod Speed]

I want to replace my current PATA HD with a larger SATA HD.
My PC has an empty drive bay, and I know how to install a new drive.

What's not clear is how to copy everything from my old drive
to the new one and make the new drive my bootable C: drive.

So I have a few questions:

1) I assume there are programs for doing this sort of thing.
Yep.

Any recommendations?

I like Acronis True Image and its the best backup app once you have moved to the new drive too.

Anything to steer clear of?

I dont like Ghost, it does the cloning at the Win level and that can
get messy if you want to resize some of the partitions when cloning.

(Anything I don't have to pay money for?

Quite a few of the hard drive manufacturers do have apps that will clone a
drive, thats what you are doing. Seagate has an older version of True Image
for download, dont think it actually check whether any seagate drive is present.

2) My PC has one of those setups where, rather than giving you a
bunch of backup CDs, the files needed to restore the system to its
factory state are all saved on a hidden partition, accessible via
a restore utility that is also located on the hidden partition.

Thats fine, just be sure to clone at the physical drive level, not by partition.

(The PC is an IBM/Lenovo ThinkCentre M50 8187, if that helps).
I'm not thrilled with this setup, but if possible I'd prefer not to break it,

Yeah, it can be handy to keep it in case you need warranty phone support etc.

so whatever copy product I use should copy absolutely *everything* from
the old disk to the new one, hidden partitions and all. Will this be a problem?

Not with a good cloner.

3) Are there any gotchas that I need to be aware of? Any helpful warnings would be greatly appreciated!

Yes. With XP and Vista, its quite important to physically unplug the original drive
for the first boot after the clone has been made. You can plug it in again after the
first boot has fully booted, but if you dont do that, you can end up with a hybrid
boot that uses both physical drives and when you either remove the original drive
later or just reformat it so you can use it for data storage, it wont boot anymore.

Just have both drives connected, do the clone. BE VERY CAREFUL THAT YOU
CLONE IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION, ITS VERY EASY TO CLONE THE BLANK
NEW DRIVE ONTO THE ORIGINAL AND LOSE EVERYTHING.

Then physically unplug the original drive, boot from the new drive.

Then you can plug the original drive back in again.

I personally leave the original unplugged for a month or two, just in case
the new drive dies from infant mortality, that way you have a backup on
the original drive. Then after a month or few reformat the original and use
it for data if you want to or just discard it if its not big enough to bother with.

 

[Arno Wagner]

I want to replace my current PATA HD with a larger SATA HD. My PC
has an empty drive bay, and I know how to install a new drive.
What's not clear is how to copy everything from my old drive to
the new one and make the new drive my bootable C: drive. So I have
a few questions:

1) I assume there are programs for doing this sort of thing. Any
recommendations? Anything to steer clear of? (Anything I don't
have to pay money for?

For free, you get tools from Linux. They can work wioth VFAT,
but are unreliable with NTFS. Making the partition bootable
after copying can be done with a recovery CD and IBM should
mail you them free of charge if you claim if will not boot
anymore (tip from the IBM supporter I talked).

2) My PC has one of those setups where, rather than giving you a
bunch of backup CDs, the files needed to restore the system to its
factory state are all saved on a hidden partition, accessible via
a restore utility that is also located on the hidden partition.
(The PC is an IBM/Lenovo ThinkCentre M50 8187, if that helps).
I'm not thrilled with this setup, but if possible I'd prefer not
to break it, so whatever copy product I use should copy absolutely
*everything* from the old disk to the new one, hidden partitions
and all. Will this be a problem?

Yes. The hidden partition needs some customization in many cases
and is difficult to copy over. Best expect to do without it and
get recovery CDs.

3) Are there any gotchas that I need to be aware of? Any helpful
warnings would be greatly appreciated!

Make backups of everything and make sure they are good.
Then you can experiment until it works.

Arno

 

[Robert Nichols]

:> I want to replace my current PATA HD with a larger SATA HD. My PC
:> has an empty drive bay, and I know how to install a new drive.
:> What's not clear is how to copy everything from my old drive to
:> the new one and make the new drive my bootable C: drive. So I have
:> a few questions:
:
:> 1) I assume there are programs for doing this sort of thing. Any
:> recommendations? Anything to steer clear of? (Anything I don't
:> have to pay money for?
:
:For free, you get tools from Linux. They can work wioth VFAT,
:but are unreliable with NTFS. Making the partition bootable
:after copying can be done with a recovery CD and IBM should
:mail you them free of charge if you claim if will not boot
:anymore (tip from the IBM supporter I talked).

From http://www.sysresccd.org you can get System Rescue CD, which is a
free, bootable CD-ROM image that runs Linux from the CD. It contains
tools for saving/restoring/creating a wide variety of file system types,
including NTFS, with which it works flawlessly. The web site has
instructions for making a bootable USB Flash drive from the image, if
you wish. One of the first things I did with it was save an image of
the recovery partition on my Lenovo laptop prior to shrinking the NTFS
partition so that I could make the machine dual-boot. (Didn't need to
recover. The partition editing tool on that CD shrank the NTFS file
system just fine, marking the file system as "dirty" so that a CHKDSK
would be recommended on the next boot.)

BTW, if you're planning on dividing your new disk into multiple
partitions, the Lenovo Recovery partition needs to remain partition 2.
It will execute OK from any partition number, but Lenovo Update Service
will fail to install updates to that tool if the partition number is not
"2". I'm not sure whether it needs to be physically located at the very
end of the disk, though that's where I kept it. Yes, that means that my
partitions are not in physical order.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

I want to replace my current PATA HD with a larger SATA HD. My PC
has an empty drive bay, and I know how to install a new drive.
What's not clear is how to copy everything from my old drive to
the new one and make the new drive my bootable C: drive. So I have
a few questions:

1) I assume there are programs for doing this sort of thing. Any
recommendations? Anything to steer clear of? (Anything I don't
have to pay money for?

There's been some discussion about this topic recently, and I have been
able to find a wealth of new information about this that I didn't have
before. For example, for years, I used to use a utility called BootIt NG
(BING) to do this sort of thing. But now I know of an alternative
utility called XXClone that does a similar job. Rod also has mentioned
True Image.

BING and XXClone are both free for use by individuals.

BING works by creating a boot-CD from which you boot and copy the
partitions. Because you're booting into a little mini-OS when under
BING, it has the advantage of making the file systems very quiet and
this lets you get a very clean and quick image of the partitions. But
the disadvantage is that you can't use Windows while you're using this,
since you're not booted into Windows. BING can also install a boot menu
system for you, if you multiple operating systems (e.g. Windows & Linux).

XXClone on the other hand works within Windows and works through Windows
to copy the files. It doesn't make a mirror-image copy of the partition
like BING, but it makes a file-by-file copy. The advantage of this is
that the target partition will be completely defragmented when you're
done, even if the source partition was badly fragmented. However, this
does take a lot more time to finish. But at least you can continue doing
other stuff in Windows while it's working. XXClone can also copy
back'n'forth between any partitions with any filesystems supported by
Windows, such as FAT and NTFS; so you can start off with an NTFS
filesystem and convert it over to a FAT filesystem. This is usually not
possible in Windows, as there are utilities to convert FAT to NTFS, not
many that can do it the other way round.

2) My PC has one of those setups where, rather than giving you a
bunch of backup CDs, the files needed to restore the system to its
factory state are all saved on a hidden partition, accessible via
a restore utility that is also located on the hidden partition.
(The PC is an IBM/Lenovo ThinkCentre M50 8187, if that helps).
I'm not thrilled with this setup, but if possible I'd prefer not
to break it, so whatever copy product I use should copy absolutely
*everything* from the old disk to the new one, hidden partitions
and all. Will this be a problem?

No problem at all, these utilities can all copy most hidden partitions.
BING can even setup a boot menu which will allow you to either boot into
the normal Windows partition or into the recovery partition. XXClone can
copy the hidden partition, but you'll have to get a separate boot
menuing system (such as SmartBoot), to be able to switch between the
regular and recovery partitions.

3) Are there any gotchas that I need to be aware of? Any helpful
warnings would be greatly appreciated!

It should be fairly straightforward. Just don't erase the old disk right
away when you're done copying. Keep it around for a while until you're
satisfied everything is fine and working as well as it did before.

Yousuf Khan