How do I move a multi OS HD to a new larger one?

[Matt L]

I'm running an small old 13 G HD with dual operating systems, Win XP is on drive H, Win 2K on C Win 98 on I I mostly use the Win XP partition . I have everything set up just as I want it, programs, file system and I don't want to change it. I need to migrate to a 120G drive I have laying around and last time I tried to do this I used Acronis and it basically hosed my original HD, took me the better part of a week to get the system to boot, even after I restored from a back up I did. Supposedly Acronis was not supposed to touch my MBR but somehow it did.

What is the best way to migrate, I'm tired of paying $40 $50 for software that I use once and often doesn't do what I need it to. I'm looking for a free or cheap way to do this, things are getting a little tight on the 13G'r. 😕

 

[Joemonkey]

use Ghost, or if you don't want to pay get the ultimate boot CD and use one of the free drive image tools

leave both HDDs in and do a drive to drive image. I don't remember exactly what it will do with the free space, but I think the last partition on the drive will end up with all the free space

 

[Matt L]

Yeah, that's the problem. Acronis supposedly let me expand each of my partitions to what ever size I wanted or would enlarge each one proportionally. Adding fee space to the end doesn't do me much good.

 

[Joemonkey]

Then I would use FDISK or some other partition creation tool to create the partitions you want, size and all, on the new 120GB disk before you move any data to it

then use Ghost or another drive image tool to image the first partition on your 13gb drive to the first partition on the 120gb drive, rinse and repeat as necessary

 

[Matt L]

Quick update: I finally used Ghost and did a successful move. The version of Ghost I had let me resize the partitions. I set up the partitions the way I wanted and Ghost tried to resize proportionally but gave me the option to set my own sizes, so I got it just as I wanted. Thanks for the info...