Moving harddisks.

platypus · 22 Dec 2008 at 14:10

I've got both my operating systems installed on a 74GB Raptor. Now Vista is taking up too much space, but having run spacemonger a few times there's little I can clear out (although the pagefile is at almost 10GB?).

So I was wondering. I've got an Acronis image of my C:\ drive, can I move that image to a new (larger) disk, or would it only work transferring the whole thing to an identical drive?

Hmm; I'm not convinced about my disk actually. Spacemonger is finding files that are playable (avi files), that were moved to an external disk ages ago..?

IAmATeaf · 22 Dec 2008 at 14:30

I use Ghost to do this but Acronis from what I've read should be able to do this no probs.

malcolm · 22 Dec 2008 at 23:31

If you use Acronis or ghost to copy the drive to a new, bigger disc, it will create a copy of your old partition on the new disc, but there will be unused space. You will then have to expand the existing partition using the empty space. I use Partition Magic for this, but I beleive gparted (?), which is freeware, can also do it.

platypus · 23 Dec 2008 at 10:19

Thanks for that Malcolm. I have a version of Partition Magic.

tres · 23 Dec 2008 at 10:29

Acronis is awesome - different size disks is fine - you don't have to copy the partition size, you can just do the files (i believe)

Also a 7 day free trial

swinnie · 23 Dec 2008 at 13:27

Acronis can do this. Just use Partition Magic (or GParted) to resize the partition afterwards (if you want to).

IAmATeaf · 23 Dec 2008 at 15:01

malcolm said:
If you use Acronis or ghost to copy the drive to a new, bigger disc, it will create a copy of your old partition on the new disc, but there will be unused space. You will then have to expand the existing partition using the empty space. I use Partition Magic for this, but I beleive gparted (?), which is freeware, can also do it.

Ghost can also resize the partition if you want so no need to use PM afterwards.

EDIT: I'd also copy the entire disk across rather then the partition else you might find that it won't boot and you'll then have to boot up off a Vista DVD to run bootmgr to do a repair.