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Replace old boot HDD? Any free easy software?

EliteRetard

EliteRetard

Diamond Member
Got old IDE 80GB boot drive in C2D system, have SATA 500GB with some data on it, but would like to partition and copy boot drive to it. Running Win XP Home 32bit

I know it's not a simple copy paste, I need the the boot sectors and whatnot copied over so I can completely remove the old crappy IDE drive and boot from (a partition on) the newer larger SATA drive.

Are there any free easy to use software options out there?

How about partition software? The 500GB drive is set as one partition, but not even half is currently used. I'd like to shrink the partition the data is on, and create a second partition to copy the boot drive to.
 
u cant do a new install??

Copying entire partitions over.. ive ran into nightmares when its the boot partition.
Also look at all the failed SSD migrations... its not as easy as it seems depending on hardware as you said.

The only time ive been successful in not getting a random blue screen was when it was on the exact same drive i moved the partition over to.

Usually its fastest to just start new OS drive, and then move the data u need manually to new drive, then format old drive to recycle.


Seeing how ur using XP.. i used to use Norton Ghost a lot with partitions in manging partitions...
http://us.norton.com/ghost/
Its not free... but its the only software i recall having success when handling direct partition / image transfers.

Your gonna need to copy and restore images of the boot drive...
Thats after u have done the proper partitions on your SATA drive.

Would it be too much work to backup the 500gb? wipe it with new partitions and then restore the data onto it?
Cuz then i would just recommend u start completely new and reinstall windows instead of transferring the img over.
 
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So it's impossible to make a backup of a boot drive (a fully functioning copy)?

Restarting/reinstall is next to impossible for any computer a few years old.

I myself just lost a lot of important stuff due to a corrupt user profile or whatever that made all the shit on my desktop and in the my documents and such disappear. I would love to have a backup but copy/paste does not work (I thought I had a backup, but it says not accessible). My OS is all wacky as shit now too...so to late for a real backup now.

I'm planning on a new high end computer (within a year)...so it sounds like I will have figure out some kind of raid setup with a few TB SSDs (I need ~2TB for program files) to have any safety.

Why is it so hard to make a copy?
 
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EliteRetard said:
Restarting/reinstall is next to impossible for any computer a few years old.
Click to expand...

Why? When you build a new computer, that's essentially what you have to do anyway. Some programs have backup & restore functions that make the migration easy, for others you find where data is located, make sure you've backed it up, and move.

I myself just lost a lot of important stuff due to a corrupt user profile or whatever that made all the shit on my desktop and in the my documents and such disappear. I would love to have a backup but copy/paste does not work (I thought I had a backup, but it says not accessible). My OS is all wacky as shit now too...so to late for a real backup now.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a very good reason for NOT migrating the old OS installation to a new drive, rather than an argument for doing so.

I'm planning on a new high end computer (within a year)...so it sounds like I will have figure out some kind of raid setup with a few TB SSDs (I need ~2TB for program files) to have any safety.
Click to expand...

RAID is not a backup. Learn how to properly backup your important data.
 
EliteRetard said:
So it's impossible to make a backup of a boot drive (a fully functioning copy)?
Click to expand...
No. Make sure you have 48-bit LBA enabled (if the installation media was XP SP1, then you should be fine), so that it will work with the upcoming large partition. Then, do a straight disk to disk copy with Clonezilla, not expanding the partition. Then, use whatever else (such as GParted) to expand the partition, after making sure it boots OK. Clonezilla doing it would too-often require a fixboot from the recovery console, so I stopped doing it that way.

Actually, what I would do now is just dd it, but that might be a little much command-line-fu...
 
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