Clone Hard drive

how to?

[knighty]

I have 2 HD's a 10GB (master) 4GB (slave) but am getting a new 60GB HD.

I'm on Win ME and was hoping to just install 60GB as slave copy everything across and then swap 60GB with 10GB.

Just rusty on how to go about it, especially making an exact copy of old drive.

[lorax]

I'd recommend you re-install the apps and then port the data. Gives you a chance to start with a clean registry and without any lingering app registration files, temp files, or other hooks into the OS.

[edited by: lorax at 5:39 pm (utc) on Jan. 15, 2003]

[Ross]

And if you're going to re-install everything then go for XP whilst you're at it. It's a much better and more stable operating system.

[brotherhood of LAN]

You can also "ghost" the hard drive by completely copying its contents over to the blank one.

I've not tried this, and that's why someone else is going to do it for me ;) It sounds like it's not all that tricky though......

[idiotgirl]

We just did this a couple weeks ago. Definitely second Lorax's suggestions of re-install the programs, then transfer the data. Unless your old system performed flawlessly, it'll quietly carry all of its old baggage over to the new HD if you only transfer or ghost it.

BTW - if you do lots and lots of graphics - upgrading to XP from Win 2000 seems to slow performance by about 50% or more, depending on the app.

[DaveAtIFG]

Symantec/Norton Ghost is the most well known drive cloning program, there are other good programs as well. You boot into DOS from a floppy, fire up Ghost and it copies the whole works, partition tables, boot records, etc. It can also adjust partition sizes as it copies.

I agree with the preceding comments about a fresh install re:registry clean up etc and have a few comments to add. From what I've read and heard, WinME is one of the worst of the M$ offerings. Experience has shown Win2K to be one of the best, both for performance and stability.

[lorax]

I'll second that comment about ME and 2K. My coworker just used Ghost and while it was an all day event, the result is a new HD with more room to play. Though if he'd had more time, he said he would have gone the reinstall route.

[stevenha]

I recently cloned an 18GB disk onto a 120 GB disk, using DriveImage software. It sounds like it works similar to Norton Ghost. You'll need 2 floppy disks. It took about 2.5 hours to copy everything and finally swap the drives. I learned everything I needed to know about it, by searching on Google.

[gsmitchell]

I will also 2nd idiotgirld comment about upgrading to Win2k. Me is the worst offering Microsoft put out!

I will also say if you have a limited amount of time, go with Ghost! It is a breeze to work with and I never had any problems with Ghost. But if you have longer definitly go with the fresh install

[bill]

I'm going to second DriveImage for imaging and copying...that software is supposedly industry standard for copying, and I've used it for years on all my systems. After installing DriveImage it's a simple 4 click process to copy your drives over...Click 'Copy Drive', 'Select Source', 'Select Destination', 'Finish'. That's it.

It's also great for automatic scheduled backups

[Woz]

I would go the re-install road as well.

But I would also think about keeping the 10Gb as the system drive and use the 60Gb as a data only drive. Then, when you have a lean, mean and clean system installed with your most necessary programs, ghost that. By keeping all your data on the second drive and only system stuff on the primary drive, if anything goes wrong it is a simple matter to reinstall the system from the ghost, and all your data remains intact on the slave.

Onya
Woz

[knighty]

Thanks for the replies, certainly seems like the common theme is bin windows ME and get 2K Pro (using it at work, very impressive)

Interested in the idea of having the 10GB drive as essential main drive. Just wondering what performance will be like using 2 drives back and forth? Plus the 10GB is going to be slower.

Going to investigate Driveimage and Norton ghost any free ones out there? ;)

[Brett_Tabke]

1 - install new drive.
2 - fire up machine and go into bios setup to make sure it was recognized.
3 - fdisk the new drive from dos.
4 - format the new drive from dos with /s to copy the system files over there. (you can do it from windows, but I wouldn't trust any hd formating or partitioning to windows)
5 - reboot and make sure the new drive is recognized and is the proper size.
6 - Copy it: Get back to windows and open your best filemanager.

Do not use win file manager for this step unless you know absolutly what you are doing. Use one of the better file copiers out there. (do NOT _move_ the files - copy them.)

Start with your Windows directory first and copy that to the new drive. Then copy all the other directories (don't forget the files in root).

Check that everything looks to be copied over to the new drive ok. Shutdown, and swap the two hard drives. If it reboots, you are good to go - if not, swap them back out and figure out what went wrong where.

There are alot of good tutorials on doing the above. Each will be slightly different in their approach. Just remember not to do anything with your old hd and data until the new system is up and running.