Copying a system drive to another disk?

[SuprSi]

I've got a 30Gb drive, with all my OS stuff, programs, games, etc, that I would like to transfer to a new drive I just bought. I know I could use Ghost to create an image, then place this image back onto the new drive, but is there another way around it? I don't have a floppy disk installed on the system, and the only way I can get into the BIOS is to remove the motherboard from the system (something on the case is preventing me from getting into it) so I'd like to avoid that if at all possible.

I mean, if I were to 'xcopy' from one disk to the other, then swap the disks out, would the computer know that I've switched disks and allow me to boot into Windows as if nothing had happened?

Cheers

Si.

 

[galt]

I'm mostly sure that a straight "xcopy" wont solve your problem. I use ghost to copy drives. I also got PowerMax software with my new Maxtor hard drive that lets me partition/format and copy drives and partitions. Its on a floppy though. So I say the easiest way is to put a floppy drive in there, copy the drives and then remove the floppy drive.

I'm now aware of any drive copying programs that boot off a cd. You could probably make one. Give it a shot.

 

[YetiIronfst]

Head to someplace like www.download.com, www.shareware.com, www.zdnet.com, www.tucows.com and do a search for "copy entire hard drive" or something like that. I know there are a few utilities out there that can copy an entire hard drive to another, of a different size, and have all of the OS / boot sector stuff come out right so it's a bootable replacement drive.

"Drive2Drive" is the only one that specifically comes to mind, but I know there are more out there. Good luck!