Transferring XP to a new hard drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter Alan G McWhan
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A

Alan G McWhan

Hi

I have a new SATA hard drive and wish to make it my primary drive (so that I
can dispose of the tiny IDE drive I originally had) but my PC did not come
with installation discs for XP.

I've tried searching the net to find out how to move the operating system
from one drive to another but without any luck (all I can find are articles
which tell you to boot from the installation disc - which I don't have!!!) -
can anyone help? Is there any way I can create my OWN boot disc?

Thanks for any help you can offer
 
Hi, Alan.

Upgrading the hard drive is one of the most natural upgrades we can make to
our computers. And MS provides no good way to handle it! You may be in for
a bumpy ride. :>(

You have two basic problems. The first is that your WinXP license is OEM.
That is, it was licensed to the Original Equipment Manufacturer for
installation on just one computer and it cannot be installed on any other
computer. How much hardware is allowed to be changed before your machine is
no longer "the same computer" is open to debate. You'll have to ask your
computer's manufacturer - the same people who did not furnish you a full
WinXP CD-ROM when you bought their machine. Most likely, you are going to
have to buy a full retail copy of WinXP to install on your newly-upgraded
computer.

The second problem is that when Setup installs WinXP, one of the first
things it does is detect your hardware environment, then it customizes your
copy of WinXP to fit that configuration. When there is a significant
change - and a new HD and SATA controller certainly count as significant -
then Setup must be run again to detect the new environment and re-configure
your copy of WinXP to fit that. Even if you could successfully "move" your
old OS to your new drive, it would still know how to boot from IDE, but not
from SATA.

In your case, you will have to start over. Physically install your new SATA
controller and drive. Make sure you have at hand the floppy diskette that
came with your new hardware; it contains drivers you will need. Then boot
from your shiny new WinXP CD-ROM and let Setup partition and format it.
Very early in the Setup process, there will be a message on the bottom of
your screen to Press F6 if you need to install SCSI or other mass storage
drivers. Press F6 and wait while Setup seems not to notice and continues to
copy files to the HD. When it finally stops, there will be instructions
onscreen for installing drivers from the floppy. After this, Setup should
reboot your computer - from the new SATA HD this time - and run to
completion.

Installing SATA or other drives as secondary devices is no more complicated
than installing a computer or other peripheral, but to install it as the
boot device requires this F6/floppy shuffle. Newer computers have SATA
support on the motherboard, but since yours came with "the tiny IDE drive",
you will no doubt have to add the SATA controller (probably on a PCI card)
and its drivers.

RC
 
Alan G McWhan said:
Hi

I have a new SATA hard drive and wish to make it my primary drive (so that I
can dispose of the tiny IDE drive I originally had) but my PC did not come
with installation discs for XP.

I've tried searching the net to find out how to move the operating system
from one drive to another but without any luck (all I can find are articles
which tell you to boot from the installation disc - which I don't have!!!) -
can anyone help? Is there any way I can create my OWN boot disc?

Thanks for any help you can offer
Click to expand...
You can setup your IDE Hard Drive again with the Sata also on the system and
then try to make a mirror of your drive with some 3rd party software like
Norton Ghost or Acronis Image.

You can also promote your both hard drives to dynamic and make a software
mirroring raid 1.The data will be the same on both hard drives.Then you
dettach your Ide Hard Drive and remains only the sata with your data.
I hope it was helpfull
 
Alan G McWhan said:
Hi

I have a new SATA hard drive and wish to make it my primary drive (so that
I can dispose of the tiny IDE drive I originally had) but my PC did not
come with installation discs for XP.

I've tried searching the net to find out how to move the operating system
from one drive to another but without any luck (all I can find are
articles which tell you to boot from the installation disc - which I don't
have!!!) - can anyone help? Is there any way I can create my OWN boot
disc?

Thanks for any help you can offer
Click to expand...

You're going to need some sort of drive copy software. There might be
something available from the maker of your hard drive, but you're probably
going to run into some other issues because now you're booting from SATA and
before it was IDE. Good luck with sorting that out.

As for creating a boot disk, you can get all sorts of them from
www.bootdisk.com, although a boot disk may not do what you expect it to.
You're pretty much going to be looking at a prompt. It's not going to
install anything for you. Or move anything. The instructions you're reading
may be poorly written, or they may be referring to an installation CD for
windows, instead of a boot disk.

As far as not having the installation disk, all OEMs are required to give
you some way to recover your system. You might want to check with them and
see what they've given you. You might have a hidden partition on that "tiny"
IDE drive, so you may not want to dispose of it, should you ever need to do
a full recovery. Chances are that even if you copy it to your new drive, it
won't work, because a partition like that is going to be looking for a
specific location to restore to, and that's not going to be SATA.

If you're planning on doing a lot of upgrades/repairs on this computer, you
may want to consider buying a real install CD for Windows, as you're going
to need it one of these days. Probably at 2am on a Sunday on a holiday
weekend when no stores are open.
 
Alan G McWhan said:
Hi

I have a new SATA hard drive and wish to make it my primary drive (so that
I can dispose of the tiny IDE drive I originally had) but my PC did not
come with installation discs for XP.

I've tried searching the net to find out how to move the operating system
from one drive to another but without any luck (all I can find are
articles which tell you to boot from the installation disc - which I don't
have!!!) - can anyone help? Is there any way I can create my OWN boot
disc?

Thanks for any help you can offer
Click to expand...

Most OEM manufacturers that set up Windows this way have a hidden partition
that has the files to restore to the factory condition. You will need a
program that can copy the hidden partiton as well as the Windows partition.
I have successfully used Acronis TrueImage to do this many times. You will
also need to install the recovery console before you start. Most OEMs that
have a recovery partition also have a folder with all the Windows files in
it. It may be somewhere on your C: drive or on the recovery partition. The
folder is called "\i386" Once you have located this folder you need to open
a cmd prompt and navigate to this folder. Once there type "win32.exe
/cmdcons" This will install the recovery console in case you need it later.
You then want to clone (with TrueImage or a similar program) the old hard
drive and manually adjust the partitions on the new drive so that the
recovery partition is the same size as the old drive and the Windows
partition uses the rest of the drive. Once the drive is cloned remove the
old drive. Go into the BIOS settings and set it to boot from the new drive.
Make sure that anything to do with RAID is disabled. If all goes well you
will now be booting to Windows from your new drive. There is a possibility
that you may have to edit the boot.ini file and/or load special drivers for
the SATA controller. If Windows doesn't boot post back here for more help.
You will need to go into the recovery console to fix it.

Kerry
 
pantekno said:
You can setup your IDE Hard Drive again with the Sata also on the system
and
then try to make a mirror of your drive with some 3rd party software like
Norton Ghost or Acronis Image.

You can also promote your both hard drives to dynamic and make a software
mirroring raid 1.The data will be the same on both hard drives.Then you
dettach your Ide Hard Drive and remains only the sata with your data.
I hope it was helpfull
Click to expand...

Windows XP cannot create a software mirror except on a remote computer
running Windows Server.

Kerry
 
Hi There. There is one program that I use to backup my hard drive on a weekly
basis. I capture GIS information and cannot afford to lose anything. The
program I use is called Casper XP. Unfortunately it's not a freeware program.
You can clone your drive while you're working in XP. Just remember to make
your new drive bootable. (Casper XP can do that for you too). You do not have
to change your boot ini file, but just select your new drive as your first
bootup drive in your bios settings. After a successful copy, please erase all
files from your old drive to keep your licence valid.
 
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