New Hard drive should't be this hard

[Sarratt]

After lots of looking around it seems the only way I can move my XP home to a new hard drive is by erasing all that was on my first.

Burn it all to CD's .... yes I will ....I know this is like an engine swap but the information about doing this is sparce

I know there are programs like "Ghost" ... but still ....

*sigh*

 

[Fallingwater]

Insert both drives in a computer and do a ghost operation.

That's much simpler if you know someone who is a Linux user.

Windows = find freeware ghost software or pay for it -> install it -> configure it -> do the ghost operation and hope everything goes fine

Linux = "dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdb", then partition the remaining space and you're done...

 

[JanCPF]

You should definitely use an image program like Acronis true image, Powerquest drive image or Norton Ghost. It's realy easy to use once you get the hang of it. If you have an USB drive you can temporarily save the image to that, and then restore it onto the new drive. This way you only need to have one of the drives in the pc at once.

Jan

 

[eluminator]

Erasing your old drive makes no sense.

If you have anything of value on your current drive, like pictures, documents, e-mail addresses, passwords, etc., you should back them up somehow.

Burning to DVD isn't a bad idea, especially if you know how to assess the quality of the burn.

Why are you replacing your current drive? If it's still in good shape, but just too small, you may be able to use it in the future to store archives of you important stuff. How to get there from here though, is the question.

I create several partitions on my drives. One partition is mainly for the OS installation. Other partitions are for data.

Remember that you can always re-install XP if you have to, but once the data is lost it is lost forever unless you have backups.

 

[Randy Shackleford]

most retail hard drives come with ghosting software.

Check the manufacture of your drives website for the data transfer software.