Help with replacing hdd

[Jimmah]

I'm looking to replace the slow and noisey 12gb drive in my Compaq E500 with a Fujitsu drive a friend traded me. My question is: is there a way I can copy the contents directly over to this drive and have it work? I don't have any of the Windows disks for it (although it runs XP now) so I'm kinda SOL in the re-installing of the OS.

Is it possible to make an image (iso or whatnot), then unpack the image onto the new drive? I have one of those IDE to laptop adapters so I could use that if this would work.

Last resort is getting a copy of Windows and starting over, I would really prefer to avoid this route though.

Thanks all 🙂

 

[corkyg]

Many drive makers have free software that will clone your old drive to your new one. The best commercial ware for that today is Acronis DriveImage 9.0. Symantec Ghost is also capable of doing it - but not as efficiently.

TrueImage prepares you a bootable CD that will do it all for you. All you have to have hardware-wise is both drives connected to the same machine. The new one can be cherry - no format needed. (At least with TI.)

 

[Jimmah]

Originally posted by: corkyg
Many drive makers have free software that will clone your old drive to your new one. The best commercial ware for that today is Acronis DriveImage 9.0. Symantec Ghost is also capable of doing it - but not as efficiently.

TrueImage prepares you a bootable CD that will do it all for you. All you have to have hardware-wise is both drives connected to the same machine. The new one can be cherry - no format needed. (At least with TI.)

Thanks but I couldn't find enough info and got a little I've done a re-install using a burned copy and my good key. A nice thing about this drive, not a whisper 🙂

Thanks for your reply 🙂