Copying Windows to New HDD

lee87 · 3 Feb 2006 at 14:36

Hi, i'm going to be changing my hard drive later today and not sure about the best way of copying everything over. I don't want to reformat and install everything again.

Could I plug 2 hard drives into the one pc and just copy and paste the entire drive to the new drive or is it more complicated than that?

Thanks.

zetec452 · 3 Feb 2006 at 14:43

You'd need a tool like norton ghost it would be impossible to manually copy everything over.

lee87 · 3 Feb 2006 at 15:03

Thanks, what does norton ghost backup as I have 15gb of data and this wouldn't fit onto a dvd?

UKDTweak · 3 Feb 2006 at 15:07

Ghost will let you copy drive to drive to give you a copy that is ready to boot.

Mr Blonde · 3 Feb 2006 at 15:15

lee87 said:
Hi, i'm going to be changing my hard drive later today and not sure about the best way of copying everything over. I don't want to reformat and install everything again.

Could I plug 2 hard drives into the one pc and just copy and paste the entire drive to the new drive or is it more complicated than that?

Thanks.

I've used "xxclone" to do this many times. It's quick, easy, gives a fully working bootable drive and best of all is that it's free for personal use.
http://xxclone.com/xxclone.zip

*Don't forget to tick all the boxes under advanced setup, boot control.

lee87 · 3 Feb 2006 at 15:22

Thanks i'll give it a go.
I couldn't find a free download for norton ghost.

Craig321 · 4 Feb 2006 at 03:23

lee87 said:
Hi, i'm going to be changing my hard drive later today and not sure about the best way of copying everything over. I don't want to reformat and install everything again.

Could I plug 2 hard drives into the one pc and just copy and paste the entire drive to the new drive or is it more complicated than that?

Thanks.

Just use Windows backup (Start > Run > ntbackup), backup all your files in that, make sure you tick system state aswell else it'll just copy the files plain. Then restore that file to the new hard drive.