I'm currently running Vista 32 bit on an 80GB HDD. The other day I picked up a new 300GB and would like to transfer the whole OS to the new HDD.
Here's what I did:
According to their site, Norton Ghost doesn't work with Vista. As an alternative I used R-Drive Image to image the C: drive. I use their file shredding program called R-Wipe and Clean and it's a good program so I figured I'd give thier imaging software a shot. Plus it said that it works with Vista so I went with it.
Anyway, I made a 100GB parititon on the new 300GB drive, named it E: and made an image of the C: drive on this new partiton. Next, I fired up R-Drive image and did the "Restore From Image" option and wrote the image from the E: drive to the unallocated 200GB on my new, larger drive and called this the D: drive. The program has a "Disk to Disk" option as well but this option wouldn't work because according to the program the C: (system drive) was/is locked.
Both the new 300GB and the old 80GB drives are SATA drives. Due to what I would call a combination of a lack of knowledge on the subject and blind faith I thought I could then just plug the new 300GB into SATA0 on the mobo, then plug the old 80GB into SATA1, reboot, and windows would then start booting from the new 300GB drive. Of course this didn't work even though I set the D: partition to active and primary on the new 300GB drive. The result of these actions were an endless reboot. I tried to unplug the 80GB from SATA1 and leave just the 300GB on SATA0, but still got nothing but an endless reboot.
Next, I left the old 80GB drive unplugged and thought maybe the "Repair Your Computer" option on the Vista installation disk would help. Even though I haven't had a chance to use it much, I thought maybe the Repair Your Computer option on the disk would add or repair the needed boot files to the D: drive (which I assume is the root of the problem) and it would all be gravy. However, the Repair Your Computer option didn't even see a Vista installation on the D: partition of the new 300GB drive.
My last and final idea was to go into the registry and change the drive letter of C: on the 80GB to an unused drive letter and change D: to C:. This didn't work either. After modifying the registry and restarting the computer Vista notified me via balloon tip that I was using a "temporary" profile and that no changes to the profile would be changed. But on a side note, my drive letters were changed. I didn't dig around too much because apparently that wasn't working either so I just went back in to the registry, changed the drive letters back, restarted and here I am.
I hope all this makes sense and hopefully someone can tell me what I need to do. Reinstalling Vista on the new drive is NOT an option because it takes much too long and is too much of a headache to go about it this way. If it comes down to it I'll just keep using the 80GB but I hope I don't have to. Yes I RTFM but the R-Image help files are vague and seem to be written by a non-English speaker because they're somewhat incoherent. If I have to use a different imaging program to make this all work that's not an issue so if anyone can point me to another imaging program to try that works on Vista then let me know.
Thanks in advance.
Here's what I did:
According to their site, Norton Ghost doesn't work with Vista. As an alternative I used R-Drive Image to image the C: drive. I use their file shredding program called R-Wipe and Clean and it's a good program so I figured I'd give thier imaging software a shot. Plus it said that it works with Vista so I went with it.
Anyway, I made a 100GB parititon on the new 300GB drive, named it E: and made an image of the C: drive on this new partiton. Next, I fired up R-Drive image and did the "Restore From Image" option and wrote the image from the E: drive to the unallocated 200GB on my new, larger drive and called this the D: drive. The program has a "Disk to Disk" option as well but this option wouldn't work because according to the program the C: (system drive) was/is locked.
Both the new 300GB and the old 80GB drives are SATA drives. Due to what I would call a combination of a lack of knowledge on the subject and blind faith I thought I could then just plug the new 300GB into SATA0 on the mobo, then plug the old 80GB into SATA1, reboot, and windows would then start booting from the new 300GB drive. Of course this didn't work even though I set the D: partition to active and primary on the new 300GB drive. The result of these actions were an endless reboot. I tried to unplug the 80GB from SATA1 and leave just the 300GB on SATA0, but still got nothing but an endless reboot.
Next, I left the old 80GB drive unplugged and thought maybe the "Repair Your Computer" option on the Vista installation disk would help. Even though I haven't had a chance to use it much, I thought maybe the Repair Your Computer option on the disk would add or repair the needed boot files to the D: drive (which I assume is the root of the problem) and it would all be gravy. However, the Repair Your Computer option didn't even see a Vista installation on the D: partition of the new 300GB drive.
My last and final idea was to go into the registry and change the drive letter of C: on the 80GB to an unused drive letter and change D: to C:. This didn't work either. After modifying the registry and restarting the computer Vista notified me via balloon tip that I was using a "temporary" profile and that no changes to the profile would be changed. But on a side note, my drive letters were changed. I didn't dig around too much because apparently that wasn't working either so I just went back in to the registry, changed the drive letters back, restarted and here I am.
I hope all this makes sense and hopefully someone can tell me what I need to do. Reinstalling Vista on the new drive is NOT an option because it takes much too long and is too much of a headache to go about it this way. If it comes down to it I'll just keep using the 80GB but I hope I don't have to. Yes I RTFM but the R-Image help files are vague and seem to be written by a non-English speaker because they're somewhat incoherent. If I have to use a different imaging program to make this all work that's not an issue so if anyone can point me to another imaging program to try that works on Vista then let me know.
Thanks in advance.
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