Time to transfer some data

[Eric998765]

Purpose:
To help me figure out the best way to get my data organized

Issue:
I like to stay very organized with all my HDDs and folders and what not, but I am now out of room. I have a mobo with 4 SATA ports, 3 of which are taken by HDDs (160, 500, 500) and the last taken by a dvd burner. the 160 and one of the 500 have less than 15 GBs of space left, and the other 500 only has like 50 gigs left. So for Christmas I'm getting a 1 TB HDD from my mom and will buy myself a 1TB hdd. the reason for this is to replace the two 500's, then I'll use one of my current 500's to replace the 160. right now the 160 is my C drive, has my OS on it, my pics, word documents, and other typical C drive stuff (like all program's i use). 500a has my movies and music, and 500b is my "tivo" drive, meaning it has nothing but tv shows on it.

Question:
What would be the best (easiest/most efficient) to transfer 160 to 500a, 500a to 1000a and 500b to 1000b?

Other Info:
My current computer is a 64bit based vista enterprise box, and once i get the two 500's transferred to the 2 1000's, I'm going to reformat 500a and put 64 bit Kubuntu 8.10 on it and use that as my only OS. I've heard of a lot of people using ghost, but y'all tell me.

PC:
ASUS P5NE-SLI
2GB (2x1GB) OCZ PC6400 Platinum (4-4-4 @ 2.1V)
GeForce 8800 GTS

 

[pugster]

I would remove the first 500gb hd and put in the 1tb hd. Format the 1tb hd and copy the data over from the 500gb. Afterwards, swap out the 500gb hd for the other 500gb and copy over to the 1tb hd. Note that this has to be done in windows.

In order to copy the OS over from the 160gb hd to the 500gb (system partition), you will have to use ghost, acronis or other imaging software. Afterwards, you can boot up to the 500gb as the c:\ drive.

 

[octopus41092]

I actually was able to swap my OS to a different disk without reformatting using Seagate's DiscWizard. I swapped all my OS and everything from a 250GB HD to a 750GB HD. The only problem was that after I did that the lettering for the hard drives were screwed up. But then I just unplugged all but the main one and changed the lettering in windows.