Replace old hard drive in XP system with New Larger Hard Drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Don
  • Start date Start date
D

Don

My old hard drive is getting pretty old and is too small. I would like
to replace it with a new larger hard drive, and copy the complete image
of the old drive to the new one.

Is the following possible?

1. Add new hard drive as secondary drive.
2. Copy old drive to new drive. (What imaging software would work for
this?)
3. Set jumpers (Do I need to change order of drives on cable?) so that
old drive is secondary and new drive is primary.
4. Reboot.

Will this work, or am I oversimplifying?

Much thanks for help.

Don
 
Set new hd as slave on same IDE cable as C: In xp,format the new hd with
a primary partition,once thru,go to run,type:XCOPY C:\*.* D:\ /c/h/e/k/r
Agree to all in the DOS window,when its thru,youre finished.Also,D: being
the new hd,if asigned diffrent letter then use that letter instead...
 
Don said:
My old hard drive is getting pretty old and is too small. I would like
to replace it with a new larger hard drive, and copy the complete image
of the old drive to the new one.

Is the following possible?

1. Add new hard drive as secondary drive.
2. Copy old drive to new drive. (What imaging software would work for
this?)
3. Set jumpers (Do I need to change order of drives on cable?) so that
old drive is secondary and new drive is primary.
4. Reboot.

Will this work, or am I oversimplifying?

Much thanks for help.

Don
Click to expand...

Create a disk image of the old hard drive using Symantec
Ghost or Acronis TrueImage, among others. Remove the old
hard drive and replace with new hard drive. Copy the image
file to the new hard drive.
 
Been there, done that.... :-)

Answers inline...


--
Tumppi
=================================
Most learned on these newsgroups
Helsinki, FINLAND
(translations from/to FI not always accurate
=================================




Don said:
My old hard drive is getting pretty old and is too small. I would like
to replace it with a new larger hard drive, and copy the complete image
of the old drive to the new one.

Is the following possible?

1. Add new hard drive as secondary drive.
Yes

2. Copy old drive to new drive. (What imaging software would work for
this?)
Click to expand...

Yes. Any imaging software should have option of "Copy disk" NOT MAKE IMAGE!!
Usually, HD makers have software just for that either with the disk or from
their website....
3. Set jumpers (Do I need to change order of drives on cable?) so that
old drive is secondary and new drive is primary.
Click to expand...

Yes. But leave old disk out for now (disconnected, no data or power leads)!
4. Reboot.
Yes.


Will this work, or am I oversimplifying?
Click to expand...

Should work, not oversimplifying. And after about two reboots, if the
machine has been behaving, you can connect the old disk as a slave,
re-partition and format it under DiskManagement....
 
Such is possible, hard drive makers usually include a CD in
the RETAIL packaged hard drive, but you can download the
software required to clone the drive from their website.



| My old hard drive is getting pretty old and is too small.
I would like
| to replace it with a new larger hard drive, and copy the
complete image
| of the old drive to the new one.
|
| Is the following possible?
|
| 1. Add new hard drive as secondary drive.
| 2. Copy old drive to new drive. (What imaging software
would work for
| this?)
| 3. Set jumpers (Do I need to change order of drives on
cable?) so that
| old drive is secondary and new drive is primary.
| 4. Reboot.
|
| Will this work, or am I oversimplifying?
|
| Much thanks for help.
|
| Don
|
 
Do a search in this resource, answered many times. Beware suggestions to use
copy or xcopy re long file names, it may appear to work at first but will
eventually cause grief - long file names are used by some programs in 8.3
format, which is not assigned in the same order each time you copy.

1. Add to same ribbon cable, master is "usually" at one end with slave in
the middle (at least every labelled ribbon cable I've struck to date conforms
to this although I've heard it may not matter). Ensure pin assignments on
rear of hard drive are appropriate for each as master and slave (assignments
should be shown on the HDD label).
2. As some of the responses indicate, if not in the package with the HDD go
to the manufacturers web site for imaging software - Norton Ghost works for
me if you can get it.
3. Following on from transferring the image, reset the new to master status
but leave the old unplugged for now. (As Thomas suggested.)
4. Reboot. When satisfied power down and plug in the old (as slave), double
check bios on start up both are recognised appropriately and check boot
orders.

Peter.
 
My old hard drive is getting pretty old and is too small. I would like
to replace it with a new larger hard drive, and copy the complete image
of the old drive to the new one.

Is the following possible?

1. Add new hard drive as secondary drive.
2. Copy old drive to new drive. (What imaging software would work for
this?)
3. Set jumpers (Do I need to change order of drives on cable?) so that
old drive is secondary and new drive is primary.
4. Reboot.

Will this work, or am I oversimplifying?

Much thanks for help.
Click to expand...

Many vendors, if you purchase a RETAIL DRIVE kit, include a cloning
application that works with their drive.

To make life simple, without having to worry about jumpers connect the
new drive in place of the CD-ROM drive, which is normally on it's own
cable - this means your new drive won't need jumpers changed, won't be
mistaken by you are the old drive, etc...

If you don't get a drive with a Cloning application, get Ghost from
Symantec, it will clone the drive and allow you to change the sizes of
the partitions at the same time.

Using a Windows COPY will not move all the files and will not result in
a perfectly bootable clone.
 
Thanks to all of you for these replies.

Peter, I did do several searches here before posting this question. I
guess my search terms were wrong. I kept finding info about moving
drives to new machines, never quite the same as what I wanted to do.

Anyway, thanks again. I'm going to go buy the new drive and get after
it.

Don
 
FYI I've cloned HDD's before using ghost but thought I would take a tip from
this thread and use Western Digitals download to clone one last night. I
thought it was problematic when the disk to disk copied files while still
running under Windows, and then the copied disk failed to start. I'm now
redoing the work properly using the tool I know - Norton Ghost. There were
no other options in the Western Digital crap for disk copying, anything you
use to clone/copy the disk will need to run at the DOS level as far as I know.

Cheers,

Peter.

(hope you're still monitoring the thread).
 
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