Hard Drives

[carlos]

My C drive is only a 40GB. If I buy a bigger one, can I copy the contents of C drive to this new drive and set it as the master. Will windows still work? Thanks

[WoWo]

Yep in theory it should work.

[OBonio]

No, there are many hidden and system files that need to be copied over too which would probably be missed by this method. Also, the boot sector on the new drive would need to be written to work properly.

When I got a new HDD, there was a util to mirror my old one onto the new one. I had to install the new one as a slave, mirror the old one, then set the new one to master, old to slave.

[carlos]

Thanks for the answers - any chance you can remember the name of the utility OBonio?

[kempie]

You need to clone your original drive. This can be achieved using Norton Ghost - link (expensive @ ~�40) but a free alternative is DrvClonerXP - link.

• Hook up the new hard drive, as a slave or on a secondary channel.
• Boot into safe mode
• Use DrvClonerXP to clone from the old system drive to the new drive.
• Shut down, turn off system
• Remove the old drive, and put the new one on the channel the old one was on
• Turn the system on
• If it boots up, then hooray! You have cloned your drive for free!
• If not, put the old drive back in the way it was, and go buy Norton Ghost... no harm done in trying!

There are, of course, other utilities to do the same thing.

[OBonio]

The util I used came with the hard drive... Can't think of the brand or the name of the util, sorry. Try kempie's suggestion.