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How do i copy (clone?) a smaller hard drive to a larger one?

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Darq

Member
I've got a Dell 4550 that i bought with a 40GB hard drive. I added a 120GB hard drive a few months ago as well.

I just bought two 200GB 8MB cache hard drives for $250 after rebate & BVG. I'm thinking i want to replace my 40GB hard drive with the 200GB one... but how do i do that without losing my XP installation, the (stupid) TurboTax one-time activation, and all my other programs? I hoping i don't have to reinstall everything, and that i can just "copy" everything over from the 40GB to the 200GB.. system files and all.

I'm assuming there's a Clone program out there i should use (which one)? Will this allow me to copy over the whole 40GB without losing the other 160GB of space? What's the process i should follow?

.. and i'm torn about what to do with my other 200GB drive. Put it in my 40 hour ReplayTV 5040? My (already upgraded) 120 hour ReplayTV 4504? My TiVo? Sell it on eb@y?

Thanks for your help,
Darq
 
Go to the website of the HD manifacture {the new drive} and download their utility. It will fit on a floppy, I have used most of them and they work great, they do a exact copy of one HD to the other, just be carefull not to clone the empty one to the full one. 😱

Bleep
 
If you'd like to possibly learn something new, try this Linux Boot Disk to get the party started, and then use the dd program to do the copying. I ended up using it to copy a 20 gig hard drive with NTFS, FAT32, and EXT3 partitions on it to a 30 gig drive with NO problems whatsoever. It takes awhile, but it works.

I haven't used that boot floppy specifically, as I already had Mandrake installed. However, it should work without a problem.
 
the easiest way is to use Norton Ghost. It is bootable so you dont have to worry about getting a boot disk. Do a disk-to-disk clone and it will copy all of the stuff from the 40gig to the 200gig.
 
Norton Ghost, PowerQuest Drive Image, or the bootable Linux distro (thanks TheFishingGeek!!!) are probably your best bets 🙂



Confused
 
Originally posted by: liquidtech
the easiest way is to use Norton Ghost. It is bootable so you dont have to worry about getting a boot disk. Do a disk-to-disk clone and it will copy all of the stuff from the 40gig to the 200gig.
Click to expand...

Do the drives have to be in any sort of configuration, i.e. separate ide channels, master, slave?
 
I don't think ghost will copy NTFS partitions, and not sure about the other utilities mentioned. Keep this in mind if your existing drive isn't FAT32.
 
Use the tool provided by your drive manufacturer. It's free, it works perfectly. No need to purchase or pirate a commercial program like Ghost or Drive Image. Did I mention it was free?
 
Ghost 2002 will copy NTFS partitions. Ghost 2001 will copy Windows 2000 NTFS partitions but not XP.

Or go the free route 🙂
 
Originally posted by: MrFiTTy
Ya or you could just do a "diskcopy" in dos?
Click to expand...

Since NT based OSes don't use true DOS, I seriously doubt diskcopy would even be available. Especially with NTFS.

Bleep: Good call on the manufacturer utility! I didn't even think of that. It's free and probably readily available with the new drive.

\Dan
 
After you copy try to run scan disk and defrag. If it won't run you may have to resize the clusters. Going from a 8GB to an 80GB I had to use Partition Magic to resize the clusters. RRRR
 
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