Hard Drive upgrade

[s0ccergoof]

I am going to upgrade a hard drive for a friend of mine, it will be an upgrade from a 2GB to at least a 20GB, my question is, what will be the easiest way to transfer all of the data from the old one to the new one? I know I could plug them both into my system, reinstall the OS on the new one and transfer stuff that way, but I would rather do something like just image the old drive onto the new one. What kind of software would I need to do this? Is it worth it to try it this way or would it be easier to just plug them both in and copy stuff over?

 

[ScrapSilicon]

most harddrives( Maxtor I know has it...) come with a utility (ies) to upgrade to bigger from smaller with complete software(s) transfer...Norton Ghost is excellent also

 

[A2KLAU]

If you are going to be running both hard drives on the same computer then it will make life alot easier. You can set the 2GB to master and boot from that and the 20GB will just storea any additional information you want to chuck at it. So its like the C: 2GB one will store all the Windows files and stuff like that and the other one could be used to store games and such like.

If that is not the intended system to be run the easiest cost effective way is to install the new drive and clean install Windows and all the relevant drivers and that, and then copy over all the rest of the software contained.

However i do sugest if you do the single 20GB one to partition it so that you will have a few gigs for Windows and all teh system software on that and drivers, and teh rest could be used for anything else like games and downloads etc etc..

Hope this helps a bit.

Albert.

 

[Bovinicus]

I have heard good things about Norton Ghost for a situation like this... I have it, but I have never used it (Came in a software bundle).

 

[Monolith]

Use XCOPY32.
At the run command type XCOPY32 C:\ D:\ /c /e /f /h /r /s
This configuration assumes that your old drive is drive C and the new drive is drive D.
Obviously you should have formatted the new drive before doing this.
Also, you will want to temporarily disable the swap file. Once all files are copied, just unplug the old drive, set the jumpers for the new drive and boot with a boot floppy. Then, go into fdisk and set the partition active for the new drive.
That's it. That's all you need to do.
Good Luck

 

[Willoughbyva]

How old is your friends system? Some older computers have hard drive size limitations (a bios thing) that need to be worked around. If you do find that this is the case then most hard drive manufacturers have a little overlay program that will work, but it doesn't work for ghosting and stuff like that. To be honest it has been a while since I have delt with this type of thing. So I would just ask if it is a really old machine and let you know that some really old machines have hard drive size limitation problems and there might be some work arounds that you could do to make it work.

Good luck with it.

Will

 

[bacillus]

Willoughbyva has a good point!
best look for a bios update which would support the full capacity of that hdd(if it doesn't already) before installing the drive.
as for data transfer, can recommend ghost or drive copy!

 

[Nack]

Norton ghost will work, like the others said, but there is something you should think about. If this is a 2GB HD, the current installation of the OS has been on that machine for a LONG time, and it is probably Windows 95 or 98. MS OSes (particularly the 9x variety) SHOULD be periodically re-installed. Somehow after years of use, they sort of get flakey and begin to crash a lot (not to mention they get hopelessly fragged and the registry gets a little mixed up). It might be in your friend's best interest to just DO the re-install after backing up whatever files are important to a CD, and then replace the data after a fresh install of the OS. Personally, if I have time, I try to re-install every 6 months or so, when running 9x. Windows NT OSes are a different matter (particularly 2000 and XP). If you have one of those installed, then I might not bother with the re-install.

Nack