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Migrating Files and Settings


hussar
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My daughter's computer was somewhat old, so recently we installed a new motherboard and graphic card in the old case and upgraded her to Windows XP using her old hard drive. She was using Windows 98SE. As was probably to expect, her old drive, at 18GB, filled up pretty soon after, and now XP is complaining that she has less than 200 MB left on the drive. So, I went out and got her a new 80GB drive, and I would like to transfer all her stuff over onto the new drive. I am currently running the Files and Settings Migration Wizard, but it appears to me that we will still need to re-install all her applications (Word, Sims, ICQ, etc.). Is that true? Is there another option that will preclude our having to reinstall all that stuff? I have seen some messages about cloning, but I have some doubts because the options I have seen all seem to cost money, and they will require some space on her old drive in order to install.

Can anyone offer some advice? I suspect that we may end up moving some files (her pictures, say) off onto the fileserver or CD so that we can install some cloning software. If that is the case, can anyone make a recommendation on a cloning application that works well?

Cheers,

hussar

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Thank you for your responses. Unfortunately, all the links I could find to DrvCloneXP throw the 404 - Not Found error when I try to connect. That includes the developer's web site. The Acronis deal was apparently closed after word of it spread too widely among non-subscribers of ComputerAct!ve. :)

I was, however, able to find the Ultimate Boot CD at www.ultimatebootcd.com, and it includes the freeware version of HDClone. I ran HDClone on the machine last night, but have not had a chance to change the cables and jumpers and see how well it worked. HDClone's freeware version has a transfer rate of about 300MB/minute, so I just left it running and went to bed. When I've had a chance to reboot the machine with the new drive, I will report back on my results.

Cheers,

hussar

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Well, OK, the imaging went well. Perhaps a bit too well. I neglected to consider that the cloned image would not be translated from FAT32 to NTFS, and so I now have two 18GB drives, one with about 58GB of free space on it.

Is there any way to tell from what drive I am booting, or does Windows always boot off the first drive on the first controller?

Looks like I may end up doing a new, full install on the new drive after all. :(

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