Hard Disk Upgrade 31 January 2005 at 12:38PM in Techie Stuff 4 replies 587 views

Robboseven

Being a regular tight wad I recently could not resist buying a new hard drive for my pc (old one 40g new one 160g).

Now, I can see that swapping the thing over is very straight forward and I've changed most components before but I would like to know if anybody out there knows the best FREE software for moving all the data from the old one to the new one and also any idea on how long it takes, how reliable the process is etc.

It's probably been asked on the site before but I'm buggnered if I can find it.

andyinlondon

well maxtor maxblast has a utility to do it built in, and it is a free download from the maxtor website. https://www.maxtor.com
all you do is connect your new drive alongside your old one. let maxblast partition and format it and it will ask if you want to copy the old drive over.

but i have not used it

can recommend norton ghost as it has worked for me every time. but ghost is not free

altenativly there are lots of other bits of software out there and im sure lots are free, a quick google search will find loads.

spookmeister

You don't say what make of hard drive you have but most hard drive manufacturers have a piece of software for this purpose.

Asuming that that your new drive came instruction it should give you details of their website and thus you should be able to find their download centre.

S.

opportunity_cost

DrvImagerXP (Windows 2000/XP)

and

XXCOPY (Windows 95/98/ME)

(both freeware) are reported to do a good job.

There's a tutorial for DrvImagerXP here.

Full discussion here.

Robboseven

It's a Maxtor but came in an OEM brown box - I'll check out your advice and get cracking!!!

Thanks