Transfering 30 gigs in XP, is it safe?

  • Thread starter Thread starter TG
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T

TG

I'm needing to know if this is the safest way to do this to prevent from
accidently loosing data.

My Primary: 120gig
My Slave: 60 gigs / 30gigs used.

My new slave, still in the wrappers is an 80gig. I need to do this to free
up this 60 gig drive for someone else in the family.

Is it safe to "right click/highlight all" on the 60gig and "paste" it onto
the 120gig. Then pull the slave, install the new 80 gig, cut and paste the
30gigs from the 120 onto the new 80.

Is this the right way to do this? XP going to be able to hang with doing
this???

Thank you very much group.
 
TG said:
I'm needing to know if this is the safest way to do this to prevent
from accidently loosing data.

My Primary: 120gig
My Slave: 60 gigs / 30gigs used.

My new slave, still in the wrappers is an 80gig. I need to do this to
free up this 60 gig drive for someone else in the family.

Is it safe to "right click/highlight all" on the 60gig and "paste" it
onto the 120gig. Then pull the slave, install the new 80 gig, cut and
paste the 30gigs from the 120 onto the new 80.

Is this the right way to do this? XP going to be able to hang with
doing this???

Thank you very much group.
Click to expand...

1) Just a friendly FYI, 'losing' has *one* 'o'. ;o)

2) No, I would not recommend doing it that way. For one thing, it would
take forever and, for another, you're likely to lose the lot if there
happens to be a problem in between. I would recommend the purchase of a
cloning application (I use Drive Image 7 from PowerQuest) and follow the,
idiotproof, instructions on backing up a data drive/partition. You can then
restore the data to a partition on the primary (if you don't have a
partition on the primary, you'll need some partitioning software - i.e.
Partition Magic 8. Both can be bought as a discounted bundle from Amazon).

Or you could burn the lot to either CDs or DVDs (assuming you have a
burner). You'll require 44 CDs or 8 DVDs.

But, simply dragging and dropping in one go is *NOT* the thing to be doing.
 
If you are talking about data file, not the operating system, and not
installed programs, then THEORETICALLY a drag & drop could do it.

However, I would advise against that, even for data.

Instead, open a command prompt and use XCOPY. In particular use the /V
option, as in verify the copy did not lose or gain a bit or two. The format
of XCOPY for this purpose would be something like

XCOPY D:\directory1 E:\ /S /V /R /H

This assumes that the files are all in directory1 on dirve letter D:\, and
going to the same name on drive letter E:\.

Caution: If you are using Windows XP, do not use *.* in XCOPY, if run from
the top level of a drive, or it may try to copy a couple of special system
files, and that will not work.
 
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