Replacing a Hard Drive

[Bedford]

I am going to replace a good working Hard Drive with a new bigger one. I was told the manufacturer would have all the software but it is confusing. I thought I would simply plug it in along side the old one and get a program that would make a copy of the old one along with system files and then change jumpers from slave to master and remove the old one. What would be the simplist easiest way.

 

[Jaxidian]

If you can get a copy of Norton Ghost, I think this would be the easiest way to do this. If you can't get a copy of Ghost, then there are some free alternatives but I'm not sure what they are - I'm sure somebody else will tell you though (or a quick google or even search of the forums here).

What Ghost and these other software programs would do is essentially take a "snapshot" of what's on one hard drive and make the other hard drive have the exact same "snapshot" of data. So you would shut down with one hard drive, "copy" that drive to the new one, change your jumpers and cables, then boot up on the new hard drive and still have the exact same software and everything.

Once you figure out what software you're going to use, be sure to ask more questions to make sure you don't goof it up - would suck to lose everything you have (I'm assuming you're like 95% of other users and don't back up ).

 

[sonoma1993]

most retail hard drives come with software to copy everything from old drive to the new drive. If you happen to buy a oem hard drive, just goto the manufacturer website, get the software from their support section. Some people may have better suggestions than this method though.

 

[Blain]

Maybe XXClone? :roll:

 

[Bedford]

I had bought this drive as OEM with no instructions. Seagate help came through with its Downloadable "DiscWizard for Windows" where you plug in the new drive in as a slave and the program formats and transfers "all" files and then you rejumper the new drive as master and remove the old one.