Questions about migrating HD stuff....

[Grendel99]

For my moms friend, I'm helping her do some work on her comp. She has custom built by a local shop. I _THINK_ it has a 486, 32MBs of ram, and I know it has a 1 gig harddrive in there now running Windows95. Well, she has filled up that one gig and wants me to install a new HDD. Which is no problem I think, but she wants all her stuff from the old hdd on the new one, and then she has the MS Windows 98 upgrade she wants also. So how do I move everything from her 1 gig unto the new Maxtor 20gig she got? I can't just plug them into mine and drag and drop.

Also is there a problem with adding a new HD in her comp? Will it be able to handle it? Will it just plain work? I'm just not use to these ancient things . Should I tell her that it would be easier just to F-Disk and start afresh? But then she would have to return the W98 upgrade and get the full version.

Any suggestions? Please help...

 

[Grendel99]

Someone? Anyone? I need this done soon, please help !

 

[goldboyd]

unfortunately a drag and drop won't work, due to hidden and system files and whatnot. however you could use you program like norton ghost, and that will copy everything from one drive to the other. there is a free trial on their website. a few issues you might run into is that fat16 wont support large than a 2 gig drive. not sure what version 95 your running and whether your current drive is fat16 or fat32, so i would upgrade to 98 first and convert your drive to fat32. also older bios's wont support over a 8 gig drive, so you might have to run some kind of drive overlay software, however the drive should come with that

 

[obenton]

If the motherboard recognizes the 20GB HD, just install it as a slave or on the second IDE channel. Then use a DOS program like Norton Ghost (xcopy.exe won't do it correctly) to copy the C: partition to the new hard drive. Then make the new HD the master on the first IDE channel and you're in business. If you upgrade to win98, I'd suggest putting another memory chip in the machine as well.

 

[obenton]

... oh, actually you can plug them into your machine and drag and drop. First, fdisk and format her HD before you take it out of her machine, then after you do it and get the new hard drive back in her machine, run fdisk again and set it as the Active partition.

 

[obenton]

... and hidden and system files can be copied, as long as you configure Windows Explorer to see them. Don't bother copying the swap file or recycle bin, as they'll be recreated when the system is started up.

 

[goldboyd]

no, dragging and dropping alone won't work, you also have to make the drive bootable. ( sys x: )

 

[Grendel99]

Hum ok, I'll try it in the morning, I might get Norton Ghost for myself and use that. Or try to setup it up as the primary slave, and copy it. Thanks for you input!