Can we settle this once and for all? Migrating to new hard disk.

VeNT

VeNT

VeNT

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I've seen lots of views and lots of options
most people say that acronis true image _CAN_ do this but you have to pick the right options etc.
But I want to know for sure.

I want to take everything (EVERYTHING) from my current 250GB C:\ and put it all on my new 1TB F3.
I then want to take my old 250GB and set it as G: or something.

I want the new drive to be the 1st boot enabled disk and just work.

any ideas?
 
GParted on a Live CD

Worth its weight in gold. (Admittedly CDs aren't the heaviest of things. Maybe not the best comparison...)
 
iirc gold doesn't make good CDs.
anyway, has anyone got a GUIDE to doing this. I want somthing that we could put in the sticcy.
 
It's really easy with true image ... select clone disc... tell it which hard drives to copy to and from ... run .. job done. I'm sure it's just as easy with the other programs mentioned too.
 
I should have really elaborated, Acronis is great for what you want to do as it is all point and click

Clonezilla (which uses gparted i think) is a bit more involved but is quicker and does a sector by sector copy rather than a file copy
 
Acronis true image is no more, it's called backup and recovery 10 now.

You can do this with Acronis in 2 ways

a) Create a bootabe media cd from the acronis management console.
b) Boot to the cd and select backup and then follow the prompts(i assume you just have one partition) and create, and hence save, an image of the whole drive. You can can then install the other HD and again run the bootable cd and this time choose recover and use the image file (whereever you saved it too) to restore onto the new drive. You will obvioulsy need the storage drive that you saved the image onto connected, be it an external drive, or you can actually save the image the drive itself that you made the image from, during the backup process.
c) Or to save you some time instead of creating an image and then restoring it, acronis has a direct clone option. So you would need the both drives installed then just boot the cd and follow the prompts again and choose your source and destintion drives correctly.

To make the new drive the first boot you will have to set it in the bios as the first boot drive.
 
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ok it's now copied all the stuff onto my new disk and I've set that as the first boot drive but it's still booting from the C:\ old disk.
 
have u checked to see if the new one boots on its own ?

sorry i havent read all the thread...incase its already been tested.

also in the bios there should be 2 options...1 for setting which to boot from first cdrom/hard disk/floppy/bla bla
and another to set which hard disk to actually boot from...double check it and if its still no then try the other hard disk.
 
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Did the original disk have just one partition?

Try the new disk on it's own, are you sure you set it to boot from the right disk?
 
VeNT said:
iirc gold doesn't make good CDs.
anyway, has anyone got a GUIDE to doing this. I want somthing that we could put in the sticcy.
Click to expand...

1) Head over to http://sourceforge.net/projects/gparted/files/gparted-live-stable/ and download the most recent .iso file listed in the download section there

2) Burn the ISO file to a CD

3) Place CD in your optical drive, reboot your PC

4) Boot from the CD (on most motherboards this can be done by bringing up the boot menu by pressing F8 or F12 at the POST screen, otherwise you will need to enter the BIOS and manually set the boot order to boot from the optical drive first).

5) Once you have booted from the disc, you will see GParted itself. This program will allow you to create, destroy, copy, or move partitions. It can also resize partitions without data loss. For more information about how to use GParted, see this page: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/larry/livecd/livecd.htm

6) Put the disc somewhere safe when you're done, it's useful!
 
Apologies for the double post, but wanted to keep the guide seperate from the query answer. If you can't boot from the drive that you have just copied TO, make sure that the partition has been set as active. You can set partition flags from within GParted
 
make sure that the partition has been set as active. You can set partition flags from within GParted
Click to expand...
This.
If it's still not booting, unplug the old drive and boot with your windows install disk, the repair option will sort out most booting issues automatically.
 
I'll have a go again tonight, do another copy, and take all the others out and run the install again
I'm on vista 64bit btw
 
ok this is what worked for me
use the boot CD to copy the drive to the new one (pick the right drive).
after that, disconnect all other drives apart from new one and run vistas install CD repair thingy.
boot windows and check you're all ok.
shut down, reconnect other drives
boot into BIOS and set the new drive as #1 to boot.
reboot into windows and check everythings ok.
 
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