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by **liljim** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 3:13 am

Hi PCTech mods and members,

Its been a while since I've had time to post anything, unfortunatly this time its a question instead of an answer.

At work, theres a PC running XP Home Edition, this machine only had a 4 gig HDD which is now full.A 100 gig drive was purchased to replace it.My question is, what would be a good method to transfer EVERYTHING from the old drive to the new.This includes OS and ALL data.They use Quickbooks to manage payroll for roughly 150 employee's and for obvious reasons, they dont want to have to set all that back up.The goal is to transfer from the 4 gig to the 100 with a method that will keep everything as it was, then remove the 4 gig from the system.

As always,
Any help is very much appreciated.

liljim

by **Cactus** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 4:03 am

Ok here's a way...now this should work for XP as well.

1. First physically install your new hard drive as a slave, set the correct jumper position.

2. Make sure you have a Windows 98 emergency startup boot disk.

3. Start windows, click the start button, click the MS-DOS button.

4. At the MS-DOS prompt, type fdisk press enter, select change current fixed disk drive. Select the number that stands for your new drive, usually 2.

5. In Fdisk, select create DOS partition or logical DOS drive, and then select and create a primary DOS partition. Exit fdisk and restart the computer.

6. In windows go to explorer and right-click on the D drive ( the new drive ) and select Format, full and copy system files.

7. In Windows explorer, choose view, folder options, click the view tab, and select show all files.

8. You need to disable virtual memory. By turning off virtual memory and rebooting your computer to get rid of WIN389.swp. Before you copy your windows folder to your new drive.

9. Copy everything from C drive to D drive. You don't want to copy WIN389.swp it's located in your windows folder on the C drive. You can right-drag all the files and folders from C to D drive. But not the WIN389.swp! disable virtual memory first and reboot to get rid of the WIN389.swp file.

9. The alternative to right-drag and drop is to: click start button, click Run, and then type in: ( XCOPY C:\ D:\ /c /e /f /h /r /s ). Don't XCopy in MS-DOS mode it will destroy long filenames.

10. Now you need use ScanDisk on your new drive (D). and check for errors. When error checking is complete, exit Windows and turn off your computer. Remove your old hard drive, set jumpers on the slave to master.

11. Start Windows! if you get an boot error use your Windows boot disk to fix it and or install windows, Finish.!

That other transfer method was for a Linux Sys
Hopes this helps!
Cactus

by **Geekgirl** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 4:18 am

Well Hello liljim

The best way I know how to do this would be to clone the h.d.d. Unfortunately the type of software you would need to use won't be free, if it is there are probably limitations.
I've heard is a good program. But at a hefty price of 69.95

I did however find a freeware cloning app called but the free version of this application is limited compared to the professional version that they offer, but it's still very useful for the purposes. So you should read everything it has to offer.

So you have something to go on now :wink:

by **Gecko** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 12:39 pm

I have to agree with Geekgirl, the best way is to image the drive.
I use Power Quest Drive Image for all my HDD imaging
but Symantec bought out Power Quest last December and dropped support for it.

You could try doing a google for Hirens BootCD it has HDD imaging software included on the CD.

by **o0obrian0o0** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 2:03 pm

Norton Ghost is the best software to do what you need. sure it costs a good price , but for a good reason..... just like microsoft office being so standard there is nothing that can compare to ghost... if you dont want to spend the money just copy the hdd.. but if u buy norton thats a image you will always have to pull back at netime you want ... not just a copy....

by **liljim** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 3:40 am

After looking through some of my software at home, I've come to realize that Nero 6 has the ability to burn a HDD backup.Being that i already have this, i think i might give that a try.Have any one else used this before?

Thanks so much for the input thus far..

by **PCguy** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 6:51 am

by **Restek** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 3:41 pm

by **liljim** » Wed Sep 22, 2004 2:55 am

Thanks for all the input, I've checked out the links and i am going to go with Ghost.I watched the flash Tutorial on creating and restoring and i cant see anything else being any easier.

Thanks Again,

liljim

by **icecube** » Wed Sep 22, 2004 4:59 am

What you'll do is build a ghost floppy disk. I recomend ghost 7.0 it fits on one floppy. The trick to keep the transfer safe is to keep each drive on a separate ide chanel. I usually unplug the cdrom and hook-up the new drive to it. Check the bios to see that the drive is reconized and boot up with the ghost disk. It should take about 5 minutes to transfer. Switch drives and your done

If you do this backwards, you'll have two blank drives.

One nice thing about ghost, is that you don't have to fdisk and formate the new drive.

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