Copying XP direct onto secondary hdd

Gedalia_w · 4 Oct 2006 at 14:36

My windows, software and games installation is on an 80gb ide drive at the moment and space has gotten very tight.

If I bought another hdd, say a 160 or 200gb to become my new primary and installed it in my pc and formated etc as my secondary (would actually be third drive), could I then simply copy&paste everything on my c: drive onto this new drive then take out the 80gb drive and make the new drive the primary drive in the bios and boot up into windows from it as my new c: drive with no problems?

Also, would sataII drives work ok on my original sata motherboard or do I need to have a sataII compatible mb?

Thanks

rpstewart · 4 Oct 2006 at 14:41

What you're trying to achieve is technically possible but there'sa bit more to it than just copying and pasting - there are hidden files etc which need to be considered. The easiest way to do it is to use something like Norton Ghost to transfer an exact image of your existing disk onto the new one. You also need to bear in mind that doing this will give you an 80Gb partition on the new drive with a pile of extra space and so a copy of Partition Magic would be needed to extend the partition into the unused space.

Gedalia_w · 4 Oct 2006 at 14:51

Hmm, that sounds a bit more troublesome.

Is there no way to tick a box in windows so that when you highlight a folder for copying that it copies all the hidden stuff too?

I have hidden folders visible already if that makes any difference...

Pajeh · 4 Oct 2006 at 15:20

The files would have to be copied to the correct place on the disc. Check out http://xxclone.com/ a free piece of software.

Justintime · 4 Oct 2006 at 23:16

rpstewart said:
What you're trying to achieve is technically possible but there'sa bit more to it than just copying and pasting - there are hidden files etc which need to be considered. The easiest way to do it is to use something like Norton Ghost to transfer an exact image of your existing disk onto the new one. You also need to bear in mind that doing this will give you an 80Gb partition on the new drive with a pile of extra space and so a copy of Partition Magic would be needed to extend the partition into the unused space.

There are options in Ghost to use whatever partition or the entire drive etc.. no need for pmagic. And yes, SATAII is backwards compatible.

james32 · 4 Oct 2006 at 23:32

Acronis True Image does the same allows you copy image using correct
image size, or expand image to cover the larger hard disc
no need for partion magic.

ByteJuggler · 4 Oct 2006 at 23:54

Gedalia_w said:
Hmm, that sounds a bit more troublesome.

Is there no way to tick a box in windows so that when you highlight a folder for copying that it copies all the hidden stuff too?

I have hidden folders visible already if that makes any difference...

No. Some files are locked/in use and thus cannot be copied in a simple fashion by Windows directly using copy and paste. You need software that can work around that etc.

Gedalia_w · 5 Oct 2006 at 09:36

Thanks for all the tips guys, much appriciated!

I'll have a look at these Acronis True Image, Ghost of Xclone programs. Sounds like it should be pretty straight forward then.

smids · 5 Oct 2006 at 11:10

I *think* Acronis True Image home has a full working trial which you might be able to use (for evaluation purposes of course). I used it for this period and ended up buying the thing because I liked it so much (and the fact that it didn't fail to actually ghost a RAID array (unlike Norton Ghost which failed pathetically and is apparently a known problem with a workaround - why not just make the program work in the first place?).

Gedalia_w · 5 Oct 2006 at 14:16

I had a look at the freeware program xxclone and it seems really simple and easy to use, fast and free.

Now just to get another hard drive. Ive got a 200gb sata drive in there already as my d: drive and a 320gb external hdd so probably a now cheap 200gb as new c: drive should be enough, wait a second, there is no such thing as enough disk space!