Transferring OS to a new hard disk.

milltown

My WD special edition hard drive is winging it's way to me from Komplett as we speak (or type, or read) and I have a question or two.
My current hard drive is a 20GB 7200rpm IBM. Will I be better off transferring my OS, apps and games onto the new hard drive with it's 8MB cache and faster seek time to speed things up?

If so, once I've formatted the new drive to ntfs can I just copy the entire contents of the 20GB to the new 80GB then using fdisk or something make the bigger drive the main/boot drive?

Any other ideas I haven't thought of are also v.welcome.

ando

put the new harddrive as slave on the primary Ide channel, format ntfs onto the new drive from within the current OS. Then use this third party tool, 'Drive Cloner' which will duplicate your current harddrive onto your new harddrive exactly. I havent used it yet so i dunno how it works exactly ??

You can get the driveclone program from : http://www.andoeire.utvinternet.com/drvcloner.exe

I'm only keeping it on my webspace for another 2/3 hours, so hurry up

Then once you have a duplicate system files on your new harddrive, shut down and make your new harddrive the Master drive on the primary IDE channel and your current 20Gb harddrive the Slave on the primary IDE. Now your system 'should' boot from your new harddrive. You can now format your 20gb drive and do what the hell you want to it

hope it helps

SouperComputer

put the new HD as a master on the 2nd channel, usually makes a 30-40% reduction in teh time to make the backup.

you cannot without a (lot of hassle) just copy an operating sysytem from one drive to another. it will not boot. you must make an image.

powerquest drive image and norton ghost are the best proggies for that. i wouldnt trust anything else!

no formatting etc will be neccacary on the new drive the contents will be "mirroerd" and also it will adjust the size of teh partition for the new drive.

i prefer Drive Image, as it has more tools and functionality than ghost.

ando

ach, my way is better

milltown

Thanks Ando I d/led that. Feel free to remove it if it was just up for my benefit. I'll let you know how I get on.

SouperComputer

Originally posted by ando
ach, my way is better

oh no its not :-p

must try the proggie myself!

TacT

hmm gettin a new hard disk in the next day or two myself, I'll give that piece of software a chance

it's also available here

milltown

The help file on that drive cloner program made it look like an awful lot of work so I just went for the clean install and I'll copy whatever I need over to the new drive as and when I need it.

Thanks anyway lads.

fester

I tried to cut and paste my master drive to my slave drive while in windows.

3 months later i got my computer working again