Swapping my HDD

impecunious

Probably been asked before, but what is the easiest (and safest) way of transferring everything, including Windows XP Pro, onto my new HDD?

TIA

Phil51

Hi Imp

I would recommend doing a clean install of windows XP.

To transfer your data and settings - click on Start, All Programs, System Tools, File & Settings transfer wizard and select this is the old computer

Copy the file that is created onto a CD/DVD/Pen drive.

Install the new HDD and Windows and then re-run the wizard selecting "this is the new computer" option

Chippy_Minton

Use Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image to clone the partition(s) on the old disk to the new disk. This does a direct disk to disk copy, including making the new disk bootable.

impecunious

Thanks for your answers.... The problem I'm having, like the majority, is that my Windows XP is OEM and I just don't have an installation disk. Ghost and Acronis cost money of course!

albertross_2

Most hard disk manufacturers have a free utility to transfer from old disk to new. Just attach as slave, copy from one to the other, put new disk on as a master. Maxtor Maxblast etc..

http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=Downloads&vgnextoid=51e092db8a13d010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD


The fact you don't have an installation disk is all the more reason to backup your system using a disk imaging program ghost or trueimage. One day you may need it.

colin79666

Its a bit fiddly but it might just work:

Install you new hard drive as a slave (if IDE) then boot using a free live Linux CD (such as Ubuntu). Then open drive 1 and select everything. Then simply copy and paste to drive 2.

However this will only work if you have your drive formatted as FAT32 as Linux cannot write to NTFS.

bluep

I just did this exact thing with a program called XXClone (the thread is on here
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=384623&highlight=bluep
- the free version did all of this without a problem, in windows without resorting to boot discs in dos
http://www.xxclone.com/ ).

It copied the drive without problems, then has a utility to copy over the drive volume number and check the master boot record.

So, connect up new drive as a slave (freshly formatted by disc managment), keep old as master, use the program in windows to copy across - make sure you also copy across the master boot record, then run the cool tools to copy across the system volume ID (the website for XXClone explains this very clearly and easily).

Then you MUST reboot off of the new drive (now set to master) whilst the old drive is disconnected from your system. After this initial boot, you can add the old drive back as a slave and reformat it for extra storage etc... when you next power down, but the initial boot must just show the new drive or it gets confused.

I tried Ghost and Maxblast and neither worked. The problem with the linux copy is that there are settings on the HD (as I understand it) to do with the volume ID and if you just copy, it doesn't create these and then when you come to boot, the volume number in the operating system registery doesn't tally with the new hard drive. XXClone specifically dealt with all of this.

My system has been running clean now for 2 days without any crashes. So you don't need to reinstall windows XP (I would have had to also reinstall 30 or so programs along with it...no thanks!)

The only thing I had to do was to reregister my norton internet security over the net - took 2 mins.

BillScarab

I thought Acronis TrueImage Vers 7 was free. Personally I use DriveImage for this sort of thing and it works very well, it's not free however.

Partition Saving 3.30 is free I believe but I have not used it so don't know how reliable it is.

There's also this, which is free, COPYR.DMA Build013 but again I've not used it so don't know how good it is.