Hard Drive Replacement

[tantone]

I need to replace an old 800MB drive with a 4.3GB. I want to transfer all of the info over from the old drive to the new one. I know that if I hook them both up to the machine, there is a way to transfer everything over without using any special program, but I have no idea how to do it.

Could someone help me out?
Thanks

[tbhoover]

Set the jumpers of your old drive to slave and plug it into the second IDE connector. Then go to BIOS setup and let the drive be detected. Once you boot up into Windows you can use Windows Explorer to drag and drop any or all of your files.

[tantone]

I was under the impression that if you used Windows Explorer some of the files would be left behind--like some of the hidden of system files. Will doing it this way take care of that problem?

[Rich H]

If you use Windows Explorer you can select 'Show System Files' but I think that just copying the directories over will copy the system files also.

One thing that you should note is that if you do copy the files this way the new hard disk will not be bootable (although someone may correct me on this point).

The way I swapped hard drives is to do a fresh install of Windows on the new hard drive (set to master) and then copy across everything I need from the slave (or simply leave the drive there as a slave).

I prefer doing it this way because over the months I accumulate so much software that I use once and forget about that it's good to do a fresh install once in a while.

[markdshark]

frequent topic. Here ya go :-)
http://www.sysopt.com/forum/Forum2/HTML/004981.html

G'luck,
Mark

[balor]

yeah if you try and copy files from explore you will not get all the files windows can't copy some of the files that are in use while
windows is running. i would suggest get a program like Powerquest's DriveCopy it makes an excact copy of the drive and xfers it to the other drive quick easy and neat

[tantone]

I noticed on the thread linked about three posts above that someone had used xcopy32 with some switch commands to get it all. Has anyone else tried this? Seems too simple to work while companies are selling programs to do it for like $69. Then again, who's to say?

[markdshark]

yup...I just used it myself not 5 minutes ago. Transferred everything off my 1.6 gig to my new 20 gigger.

Worked like a charm. As to why companies are selling programs that do the job for 60 dollars or more?.....*chuckles*...dunno. I'd say that's a question more appropriate for the Deals and "Steals" section ;-)

Mark

[shadow]

You've got some good suggestions here. It's something I tried once with Ghost but gave up. But when I do try it again I'll try one of the suggestions on this board. Also check this site: www.winplanet.com/winplanet/tutorials/488/1/ (http://www.winplanet.com/winplanet/tutorials/488/1/)