Changing Hard Drives

[eggmiester]

Hi Everyone,

Im running XP Pro on my system, but my C drive is only 20 gb and getting onn a bit. over the past 2 - 3 weeks its been running pretty slow, although i've 'cleaned up' the drive and moved all non essential files and folders onto my second drive which is a fair bit bigger at 200gb.

I have a spare drive of the same make and model, which is 120gb and has never been used (bought it new about a year and a half ago) so i was wondering is there any way i could do a mirror copy of my current C drive onto this spare drive with the intention of using the spare as the C drive replacement, without having to re-install windows from scratch?

I know theres software available, like Seagate's Disc Wizard (im using seagate barracuda drives), but found on a previous attempt about a year ago that it didnt transfer all the files and folders correctly, or there was some issues with certain programs losing file paths etc. Could i just plug the spare in and directly copy the C drive contents (like you would with say, an MP3 file) on to the spare and will that work? The drives are IDE drives. Any advice greatly appreciated.

Dan.

[-pops-]

It isn't possible just to transfer files in the way you say as you need to make the new drive bootable.

A program such as Acronis, as well as being an efficient backup program, will also clone your hard drive such that you can make a new bootable "C" drive.

See the Acronis tab at the top of this page.

[Boris]

Freeware alternative - HDClone Free Edition

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/hdclonefree.html

Not tried it myself, but 3 out of the 5 user reviews on that page say that it works OK :)

[AlanHo]

The problem with using Acronis to clone your present system onto a new hard drive is that you will also transfer all the unwanted baggage.

If I were installing a new drive I would prefer to format it and install the operating system and all my programmes from scratch - so that the drive is not polluted with any unwanted - or undesirable - stuff.

Before doing this I would transfer all my data to the 200 Gb second hard drive you are retaining.

Having done that - it would then be the best time to use Acronis to back up the C: drive and D: drive to an external drive so that if things get slow in the future, you can always revert to the original clean installation. I would of course then take regular Acronis back ups for future security.