Replacing Hard Drive

[afawzy316]

Hi all,

I just bought a new computer with a 120 GB Hard Drive and i wanna take it and put it in my old computer and take my old 60 GB Hard Drive and put it in the new computer, but first i wanna move my files from the old Hard Drive to the new one. I was thinking of putting both hard drives in one computer and just moving files from one to the other....would this actually work? There is space for two hard drives and all the connections r there. Please give me any suggestions on how to move files etc. and how to go about swapping the drives.

Thanks

 

[mechBgon]

Tell us more about the two computers and what operating system they use. Do you have normal Windows installation CD's, or some sort of machine-specific ones such as what comes with many pre-built computers?

There are a variety of ways that you could move your files, such as setting up a network between the two PCs, or burning the files onto a CD, or the method you mentioned, but you wouldn't want to get part-way done and find out that your machine-specific restoration CD's have no sense of humor and won't work on the alternate drive.

 

[afawzy316]

I use Windows XP on both my computers, they both have ample RAM and speed. And i have a windows Xp installation CD and i have formated both drives since the time i bought them and reinstalled widnows etc.

 

[jackschmittusa]

When I do what you want to do, I connect both drives to the same computer (you don't even have to have the drives mounted in the case, lay them on the bench and hook up the cables) as master/slave, and use Norton Ghost to duplicate the original. Have done it many times.

 

[whovous]

SImply copying one drive to the other does not work.

I think there may be a free alternative to Ghost out there, but I've not hunted for it, since it is included with the Norton System Works Professional that I bought for about $13. You might also be able to find a free trial version of Ghost, and decide whether you want to keep it after using it to clone your system to a new drive. Ghost is not the most user friendly thing in the world, but it works fine after you get the hang of it.

 

[KenGr]

It has never been clear in this thread just exactly what the intent was. If the intent is to copy data files from one drive to the other, just copying installing both in the computer temporarily and copying one to the other is the simplest way. However, beware if the second drive also has a WinXP OS installed. This can confuse the computer mightily due to the WinXP automation in "fixing" the operating system.

If the intent is to clone the drive, operating system and all, all the drive manufacturers have programs which can be used to do this from a bootable floppy. The newest versions of these work with WinXP and NTFS. You just put the second drive in the computer, appropriately jumpered, and boot from the floppy.

If the intent is to move applications (programs) only there is no good way to do this. You need to do a reinstall of the specific applications on the new drive.