copy hard drive

[Karen]

thanks in advance for any help this problem question have been driving me crazy.i have an old com with a 6.5 hard drive with winxp as the OS.i do not have the drivers for this unit and i do not know the manufacturer of the cards in the unit or if the drivers are available.
since the hard drive is too small for my curent increasing use i would like to install a 20gig drive.
how do i tranfer all data plus OS and drivers to the new drive.
thanks again in advance .

[Panama Red]

If the 6.5Gb hard drive is 7200 rpm, you may want to consider keeping the XP on there and add another hdd that you can transfer just the data files to. If not, or if you just prefer the newer drive, get one with 7200 rpm and 8mb cache for best performance. To move all the data/os from one drive to another, you'd need a program like Norton's Ghost to accomplish that.

[Confused]

You could just leave the 6.5 there, install the 20G, drag and drop files to the new drive. Then run disk cleanup and defrag on the 6.5 and direct any new installs to the new drive.

Or as Red mentioned if the old drive is slower, you could clone the 6.5 to the new drive. In addition to Ghost, drive manufacturers offer utilities to ghost the drive. If your new drive is retail it probably came with a CD or floppy containing a utility to ghost the drive or you can go to the drive site and download the utility if the drive is OEM.

Easiest is first option but if your PC is so old that the 6.5 drive is 5400RPM you would benifit byr cloning to the new one if it is 7200RPM.
Chas

[Karen]

i understan wut u guys say but i do not want to loose OS because i have no drivers or take the chance.
how do find out the speed of the hard drive without opening the comp.
if i should slave the second rive how would this affect the first drive.
thanks again.

[Confused]

Originally posted by Karen i understan wut u guys say but i do not want to loose OS because i have no drivers or take the chance. how do find out the speed of the hard drive without opening the comp. if i should slave the second rive how would this affect the first drive. thanks again.

Slaving won't affect the original drive with your OS. You can install the second drive, move as much data off the 6.5 as you want and direct all new loads to the new drive. Probably safest method. Even though cloaning (either with drive manufacturer utility or Ghost) is relative safe, thing can go wrong.
Charlie

[Karen]

hmmmmmm how do i direct all new to the nw drive.
thanks again

[Panama Red]

If you go into the system bios, the hard drive should be listed as the Primary Master and show you the part number and manufacturer. Write down what it says and then go to that manufacturer's web site. There you should be able to find the detailed specs of the OS hard drive in your system, including rpm. There would be no effect on either drive by adding a slave each would run at it's own design rpm and data would be retrieved at the designed seek time. The only reason I suggested putting the OS on the faster HDD is to optimize performance. If you are unable to reinstall it or Ghost it, then just move the data files to the new drive and use it as is.

[Confused]

Originally posted by Karen hmmmmmm how do i direct all new to the nw drive. thanks again

I have 4 partitions (drives) with "C" having my OS and drivers, "D" having programs and E and F used for other things.

The way I do it is whenever I load something it usually gives a location where it is going to load to. If it is "C; Program files" I click browse and point it to "D: Program files".

There is a registry hack that will do it automatically but I have never messed with it and don't know hot to set it up. If you want to do the registry hack someone here can give directions.
Chas

[MulderMan]

doesnt xp go mad if you clone a hard drive or move the os to another drive?

[Star-Com]

Norton Ghost would do the Job.

You can clone a hard disk directly to another hard disk or a partition directly to another partition.

Quoted from Norton Ghost Help file :


Use Norton Ghost in Windows to do the following:

Back up your computer.

Restore an image file onto your computer.

You can use the Restore Wizard to restore an image file if you can still start Windows.

Clone a hard disk or partition directly to another hard disk or partition.

Do not use Norton Ghost in Windows for the following tasks. Use Ghost.exe in DOS for any of the following:

If you cannot start Windows on your computer.

Cloning a computer that does not have Windows installed.

Note: Sometimes the drive letter in Norton Ghost in DOS does not match the drive letter in Windows.

For example:

You back up to a file, F:\test.gho. When you execute backup task, it appears in Ghost.exe as E:\test.gho.

[jimmyrules712]

go to pricewatch.com, get norton utilities 2003 for like $10, it comes with ghost.

[RayH]

My present computer started with an 8GB Hard drive. I cloned it to an 80 GB.

[RayH]

Unfortunately, a formerly freeware WinDriversBackup is now payware. It'll organize ALL your drivers into a single folder. Copy that folder to disk. When you have to reinstall, you have your drivers!

[glc]

You may not have to buy anything to clone the drive. Most hard drive manufacturer's free downloadable utilities have a cloning function.