Replicate Hard Drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter J Stafford
  • Start date Start date
J

J Stafford

Hi: I'm planning a hard drive upgrade. Does anyone know of a freeware
program that will copy the existing hard drive contents with operating
system to the new hard disk so that I can then simply switch disks?
Thanks for any help. john
 
J said:
Hi: I'm planning a hard drive upgrade. Does anyone know of a
freeware program that will copy the existing hard drive contents
with operating system to the new hard disk so that I can then
simply switch disks? Thanks for any help. john
Click to expand...

Make your new drive bootable and simply copy from C: to it with
Windows...nothing else is necessary.

Additionally, most all drive manufacturers incluse or have available a
program for doing the above.


--
dadiOH
_____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.0...
....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico
____________________________
 
dadiOH said:
Make your new drive bootable and simply copy from C: to it with
Windows...nothing else is necessary.

Additionally, most all drive manufacturers incluse or have available a
program for doing the above.


--
dadiOH
_____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.0...
...a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico
____________________________
Click to expand...
Thank you for the replies. I omited to mention that I wanted to clone my
WinXP system and it seems from the web site that xxcopy won't clone a
WinXP disk so that it will be bootable - unless I misread. But thanks. John
 
J said:
Thank you for the replies. I omited to mention that I wanted to
clone my WinXP system and it seems from the web site that xxcopy
won't clone a WinXP disk so that it will be bootable - unless I
misread. But thanks. John
Click to expand...

You choose to make the drive bootable (or not) when you format it. Once
bootable, all you have to do is copy everything to it. Once copied, put it
as master on the primary IDE.

--
dadiOH
_____________________________

dadiOH's dandies v3.0...
....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from
LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that.
Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico
____________________________
 
dadiOH said:
You choose to make the drive bootable (or not) when you format it. Once
bootable, all you have to do is copy everything to it. Once copied, put it
as master on the primary IDE.
Click to expand...

dadiOH,

With XP, he's most likely running NTFS, so he won't be able to copy
everything to the new drive. Some files will be locked, and copy,
xcopy, or xxcopy won't be able to read them. Please don't give this
advice to 2K/XP users, it doesn't work.


J Stafford,

One way to do this is to get a bootable rescue CD such as
SystemRescueCD (http://www.systemrescuecd.org) or BartPE
(http://www.nu2.nu), and use it to copy the entire drive to another.
Since you're running the OS from the CD, none of the files on your
hard drive are locked, so you will be able to copy the entire thing.

However, neither of these is trivial. SystemRescueCD will require that
you learn some linux. BartPE requires a somewhat complicated set of
steps to create the BartPE CD.

My recommendation is to reinstall windows and your applications on the
new drive. This gives you a chance to start "clean", removing old
applications you don't use any more, which tends to make your system
respond faster and be more stable. Once you have your new disk set up,
you can copy your data files from the old disk to the new one.

Terry
 
J Stafford said:
Thank you for the replies. I omited to mention that I wanted to clone my
WinXP system and it seems from the web site that xxcopy won't clone a
WinXP disk so that it will be bootable - unless I misread. But thanks. John
Click to expand...

Read the review of partition saving programs I just posted.
I think Partition Saving would suit your needs perfectly, and it is
freeware. http://www.partition-saving.com
 
Back
Top