New HDD from old HDD

[tinwindow]

Hey ya' all,
Ok...I know it's been asked before...
Someone has a older computer
They have a new bigger HDD that they want to use.
Please let her know the easiest way to switch, with the least amount of frustration.
I surely have suggestions but I also know there is a lot of people here that are more qualified to direct her much more efficiently than I.....
So Please Make As Many Suggestions As You Can
Thank You
TW

[Roy]

If the new HDD is from Western Digital, then the Data Lifeguard Utilities includes a way to clone the old drive to the new one. (It can be downloaded from the WD site.) Other manufacturers may provide similar help.

The option is to obtain Drive Copy. It does only one thing ~ it clones a smaller drive to a larger one. If there are partitions, there will be partitions with the same data, only they will be proportionately larger. Drive Image is the big brother, it offers more choices.

[shadow]

What brand of HDD's are both of them?
If the new HDD didnt come with software, check the manufacturers site for some that will do the cloning, that usually works best.

Or there's always Norton Ghost.

Or start with a fresh install, once the OS is installed put the old drive as slave and copy any files they want to keep, unhook old drive. Of course any apps will have to be reinstalled but there's alot to be said for fresh installs http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

BTW, the WD software works great and I believe it will work if either drive is a WD.

[This message has been edited by shadow (edited 03-20-2001).]

[tinwindow]

Hey ya' all,
Thanks for the reply.
How is the Norton Ghost anyways and where can I pick it up??
Does it also back up totally a HDD onto like a CD burner??
TW

[Comtech]

Step by step instructions on how to do that, and more: http://www.pcmech.com/article.htm?more

[Bovon]

How "old" is the computer?. Bios in old computers will only recognize hard drives up to a certain size. There is a work around however...it is called Dynamic Drive Overlay...or DDO for short. DDO is is a disk manager made by Ontrack, and is leased out to the manufacturers of hard drives, who then modify the software to work with their drives with some extras. It 'tricks' the old bios into thinking the new drive is of the right size.

If the new, larger HDD is to large for her older computer, many times a copy of the disk manager comes with new drives or can be downloaded from the web site for that particular drive.

DDO is normally loaded to a newly formated drive before the OS is installed. I have used it several times over the years, but never tried to clone, or copy from one drive to another an already working system...but it is worth a shot if the old computer dosn't recognize the total capacity of the new, larger drive.

On another note. I 'copy' the data from one drive to another by using a 'new' type of Windows Explorer, called Power Desk Explorer...a 3rd party utility. It looks just like Windows Explorer, but with many more options. To do a drive copy from PD. sometime...do it this way...

First, fdisk the new drive and setup any partitions if wanted, setup, the dos partition, but do not make it active. Format all partitions. Jumper as a slave. boot into windows, and go to a dos prompt. at the dos prompt, type attrib -r -a -s -h (note spaces) hit enter and exit and return to windows. Go to Power Desk Explorer (Windows Explorer may do this, but really don't think so).

Now, you should see the new drive with its drive letters down stream from the old drive.

For simplicty, lets say that the old drive only has one partition, C: drive, and the new drive has only one partition, D: drive will now be there with nothing on it. Click on the C: at the top of the drive letters in the left window, and then all folders show up in the right window, along with all files. Highlight everything in the right window...all files and folders, and drag and drop into the D: drive. Shut down, go back to fdisk, and make the new drive dos partition active. Jumper it to master and reboot on the new drive...everything should come right back as if still using the old drive...same as Ghost, but easier and faster...

[tinwindow]

Hey....,
Wow this is intence....
Thanks for the info...
I hope we can do it right...
All is appreciated....
I'll get back to ya'
Thanks again !!!
TW

[nitro22]

Why not use the smaller drive for the system and the bigger one for everything else. This way you dont have to get rid of any hardware. Also, you should see a performance increase as the system drive will not be cluttered with cr@p.

[This message has been edited by nitro22 (edited 03-22-2001).]