Migrating Everything to a New HDD

[imported_blip]

My main HDD has been threatening to die, so I just installed a new WD 640GB SATA drive, and I installed windows on it last night. Of course, it has nothing else installed on it when I boot to that copy of Windows. Couple of questions:

1. What's the best way of moving to a new drive? I want to keep most/all of my programs, as well as preferences, etc. I googled around for mirroring software, and came across R-Drive Image, which has a free 15 day trial. I d/l'ed it last night, and started the process. This morning, after about 6 hours, it was only about 25-30% done. Is it really going to take an entire day? (my old drive is 200GB) Anyone have experience with this program, because I wasn't sure if I should be selecting the "Make drive image" or "copy hard drive" option.

2. If I use the Windows XP backup, I think I can selectively choose the most important items I want to move, but will this preserve my preferences and settings?

3. Right now, as I boot, I'm asked which Windows install I want to boot into, since I have 2 drives with full installs. Once I migrate to my new drive, will I need to uninstall windows on my old drive? I plan on keeping it installed for now, especially if I don't copy everything over right away. Or is there a way to tell the BIOS, etc., to always load one or the other Windows?

OK, that was longer than I had envisioned, but figure I'll ask everything at once.
Any and all suggestions/ideas are greatly appreciated!

 

[blackangst1]

One thing to keep in mind is transfer times, read/write times. Gotta figure if youre moving everything but the OS its alot of data. Cant really go faster than what the drive will write at. Doesnt matter if its an image or plain ol drag and drop.

Unless Im missing something.

 

[Denithor]

Western Digital Lifeguard 11.2

Install on your old drive. Wipe the new install of Windows from the new drive (you want a bare drive to start with). Use the tool to migrate everything to the new drive. Painless and all programs etc should function like normal after complete.

 

[RebateMonger]

Yeah, if you are putting the new hard drive in the same PC as the original one, the disk drive maker's migration utility is as good a way to go as any. I haven't used them for SATA disk migrations, but as long as you are going SATA-to-SATA I wouldn't expect any issues. You'll likely have to re-Activate Windows when you boot to the new drive, but that shouldn't be a big deal.

 

[taltamir]

a bunch of bad ideas all around... Sure they are telling you HOW to do what you asked for, but you are asking for the wrong thing! sure you WANT to keep everything installed, everyone would WANT To do that, but it is not practical or wise, and with the old drive DYING you should get things off of it ASAP and you should NOT reuse the installation of programs and OS (As they might be corrupted)...

Don't focus on what you want and how you could do it, focus on what is a practical solution to your problem.

Get the new drive, put it in, install windows on it... plug the old drive as a secondary drive and DON'T boot from it. (drive C should be your new drive), the old drive will be detected by windows and show up as drive D.
Now copy off all the data you need, move your documents over, copy the game SAVES (not the entire directories) and then reinstall the games (test to make sure they work, you would have to find out individual save locations for some), reinstall all your programs.

Look into user data directory and copy over ONLY WHAT YOU WANT TO KEEP (a lot of it is junk that you are better off without). The biggest ones are the favorites directory (if you use IE) or the mozilla and firefox user accounts (if you use firefox and thunderbird).

To give a car analogy... if a person comes into a car mechanics forum, says his spark plugs burned out, and asks for instructions on how to replace the entire engine, the correct response is to explain to him that he should just replace the spark plugs. Not explaining to him how he could (unnecessarily) drop his engine.

Steps of transfer:
1. Specific folders from Application data (only the ones you NEED, don't move the whole folder).
2. IE's favorites (unless you use firefox, in which case it is in application data).
3. Outlook emails (again, if you use thunderbird it is in app data).
4. Stuff on desktop
5. My Documents
6. Game saves (reinstall games individually... some saves will be in app data, some in my documents, others in the same DIRECTORY of the game in question or in some more obscure location.)
7. other program data (the hunderbird and IE and stuff are program data, depending on what you use you might have more to move, such as UPS worldship or whatever it is you use).
8. Do NOT move windows settings, just manually set the preferences you have in your new windows install.
9. Reinstall all programs one by one on the new machine. Run them to verify they found their data (aka, run firefox, it should open with all your stuff if you moved the app data correctly, if you did not then it would ask you to create a new user, cancel that and try again).

 

[blackangst1]

My bad I didnt realize he wanted to move his XP install...in which case my drag and drop idea is teh suck

 

[imported_blip]

Thanks for all the replies. One note, I am going from IDE to SATA, not sure if that makes any difference.

If I use the disc copy function in Data Lifeguard, does that copy settings or just the files? Also, can you select certain files/programs with that, or will it only copy everything?

Also, once I do this, how do I get rid of Windows on my old drive, while keeping the drive on the system? I will then have 2 IDE drives (master and slave on same cable) and 1 SATA that I want to be my OS disc. Is there a way to tell the system that both IDE drives will in effect be slaves to the SATA one? I have the BIOS set with boot order, but it still asks me which copy of Windows I want to boot into.

I may play around with reinstalling certain programs one by one, as I do like the idea of getting rid of the clutter. I'm only hesitant to do so because I know I've made many changes over the years to get things working the way I like, and I fear forgetting how to get things straight (one example, it took me a couple days to get my dual monitor and TV displays set up and working right with the nvidia control panel software. Maybe experience will make it easier this time around).

Thanks again for all the help and ideas!

 

[RebateMonger]

Originally posted by: blip
I have the BIOS set with boot order, but it still asks me which copy of Windows I want to boot into.!

XP's System Properties menu has an option to change the boot menu. You can delete references to a boot OS that you never want to boot into from there. Or uncheck the "read only" setting of the Boot.ini file in the root directory of the new hard drive and edit it manually to remove the reference to the second boot drive.

taltamir's concern about the condition of the original drive is certainly valid. You didn't indicate exactly WHY you thought your old hard drive was failing. If it's got data errors, then cloning would be a bad idea.

 

[Keitero]

You could always clone the drive (with ghost, force clone and iqnore CRC) then run chkdsk afterwards to be on the safe side. I had to do that on two of my personal machines with dying drives (one a laptop and one a desktop) and this way works great for me. This however requires you to dish out some cash for Ghost or True Image.

 

[imported_blip]

My HDD started making a clicking noise and taking a loooong time to boot up. I haven't noticed anything that would indicate data errors, so I think it's a mechanical failing.

 

[Keitero]

I've been able to only recover data once from a drive suffering the click-of-death. It's very YMMV in this case and if you don't feel like shelling out some serious cash on DriveSavers or OnTrack Data Recovery Services, then it might be worth a shot to give a force ghost clone a shot.

 

[taltamir]

mechanical failing could very well come with data errors. Not something I would risk.

Thanks for all the replies. One note, I am going from IDE to SATA, not sure if that makes any difference.

Actually it DOES matter. There is a trick to it, google for some guides. If you just clone it without first going through the preparation process then you would get a blue screen every time you boot up. But if you DO go through the process, then it should work. (you want to basically get rid of your specific SATA drivers and replace them with generic ATA drivers).

You could always clone the drive (with ghost, force clone and iqnore CRC) then run chkdsk afterwards to be on the safe side

The only reason to ignore CRC check is if you get CRC errors, a CRC error means the file is corrupt, and it will abort the copy of a corrupt file unless you ignore a CRC check (in which case it will copy it over as corrupt data for you to sift through). the checkdisk is not gonna make you safe at all, checkdisk checks your filesystem for errors, NOT for corrupt data. Unless the file allocation table or the journal itself had corrupt data it will find none. And you will just have a bunch of corrupt data you are not aware of...
And the more useless data (like the windows directory or game data files, not saves, just the data) you copy the more likely your drive is to fail midway through the process.

 

[craftech]

I routinely clone my hard drive as a backup method with Norton Ghost 2003. I have it installed on a w98SE boot disk. No problem booting to it. Goes right into the Ghost 2003 program. There I just copy the whole drive onto the backup. I am copying a SATA 74GB drive (WD Raptor) to a cheap 80 GB WD IDE drive. No problem. I use a removeable drive mounted in a drawer in one of the slots. The drawr has a SATA to IDE dongle on the back of it. There is a 160 GB IDE drive in the drawer for normal use. When I want to do the backup I boot to Norton Ghost 2003 using the floppy disk I mentioned above with the backup drive in the drawer instead of the 640 GB drive. When I am done I switch back to the 160GB drive and reboot. I do this once a week.

John

 

[taltamir]

most likely because the dongled drawer you use... it has one driver and a controller / convertor taking care of things.
But if you are pluging a HDD to a SATA or IDE port on the MOTHERBOARD then those are completely different drivers. If windows tries to boot with an IDE driver off of a SATA drive you will get a blue screen instead (every time). which is why there are guides on how to convert your windows install BEFORE you clone it. (convert windows from SATA to IDE, shut down, clone drive from SATA to IDE, put in IDE drive and but... or the other way around)

 

[craftech]

Originally posted by: taltamir
most likely because the dongled drawer you use... it has one driver and a controller / convertor taking care of things.
But if you are pluging a HDD to a SATA or IDE port on the MOTHERBOARD then those are completely different drivers. If windows tries to boot with an IDE driver off of a SATA drive you will get a blue screen instead (every time). which is why there are guides on how to convert your windows install BEFORE you clone it. (convert windows from SATA to IDE, shut down, clone drive from SATA to IDE, put in IDE drive and but... or the other way around)

In my case that would not happen. I would simply put a new drive where the old one was, boot to the w98SE with Norton Ghost 2003 floppy disc and choose Disk to Disk copy. Then copy the contents of the IDE backup drive that is in the drawer to the new SATA drive.

Using the same floppy disc I mentioned, the OP could simply plug his 640 GB drive into a SATA port, boot to the floppy with Ghost 2003 disc, then copy the old drive to the new one. Put the newly cloned drive in place of the old one and boot. That's all.

John