How do I move files from my old HD to my new HD?

[Flightsim]

I am almost done with building my new computer, but I have some files on my old hard drive that I want to keep. How can I move them from my old Hard Drive to my new HD? Most of the files are too big to fit on a floppy disk or CD. Do I need to buy a software program, or is there another way? Thanks for any help.

 

[kly1222]

Just hook up your old drive on any ide controller that is available (secondary master/slave or primary slave), boot up, and transfer the files. Just make sure you have the master/slave jumper on the old drive on the proper setting. You can then leave the old drive in there for extra storage or remove it.

 

[gf4200isdabest]

Are you joking!!!!???

Yes; you need to get a software program. You can choose from the following: MS-DOS, Win 1.0 BETA, Win 2.0 BETA, Win 3.1, Win95, Win98, Win ME, Win2k, Linux, WinXP, Mac OS X, Lindows, argh...I'm sick of naming OS'es... Dude! Have you ever heard of "cut and paste"!!!???

Just set your old HD as a slave HD, boot the computer and start moving the files over!

 

[HalfCrazy]

You could temp. hookup your old hard drive to any ide controller that is available . Then just do a copy&paste to the files you wish to keep. Once you are done just remove the old hdd back out. Very simple. 😉

 

[Flightsim]

Just hook up your old drive on any ide controller that is available (secondary master/slave or primary slave), boot up, and transfer the files. Just make sure you have the master/slave jumper on the old drive on the proper setting. You can then leave the old drive in there for extra storage or remove it.

My old HD has Windows 98 installed on it, but my new HD has Windows XP installed. Wouldn't there be some kind of error if my HD's didn't run off of the same OS? Also, my old HD is much slower than my new 7.2K rpm HD. Would this cause problems?

 

[Mattster]

Well, depending on which OS you are moving to (W2k, etc.), you should just be able to connect your old hard drive and boot from your new drive when the OS setup is complete. After you are in the OS, you should be able to use Windows Explorer to copy all the files that you want over. You can copy program directories over, but the associated Registry entries for the program will not get copied in the process. Some programs do not have a problem with this and will recreate the necessary entries the first time you run them under your fresh OS install. Other programs, quite possibly Word, Access, etc, will have a problem if you just copy them over and usually requires a clean install. If its just data files that you want to copy, you should be fine.

Now, there is a big problem that affects W2k that I ran into a couple of weeks ago at a customer site. I had just installed a clean W2k, along with all device drivers, etc. They wanted files copied from the old hard drive which had Windows 98 on it. Well, I copied all of the files over from the old drive and shut the machine down so I could take the old drive off. I reboot into W2k and I cannot log into the system because it said the swap file was too small or did not exist. What happened was the W2k somehow set some of the swap file up on the Win98 drive.

Long story short, I ran fdisk /mbr from a dos disk, and rebooted into W2k just fine. That will reset the partition/drive information that W2k sees. I'm not sure if this problem would effect either of the XP's, but its a possibility.

Hope this helps!
Matt

 

[corkyg]

Either OS will work - and only one will be booted to. Both have Explorer and that makes the drag and drop a piece of cake. Different drive speeds make no difference.

 

[Flightsim]

Either OS will work - and only one will be booted to. Both have Explorer and that makes the drag and drop a piece of cake. Different drive speeds make no difference.

Looks like this will be easier than I thought. I thought I would have to pay $50 or so for a software program designed to move files. Thanks for the help everyone. 🙂