Cloning a pc hard drive?

[sirch345]

I'm trying to fit a new bigger hard drive to my desktop computer.

Has anyone ever cloned a computer hard drive, one using Windows XP?
I'm trying to clone my existing hard drive (C. drive) to a bigger one. Once I've cloned it I want to replace it with the bigger h/drive.

From what I gather Windows XP is not the most forgiving when it comes to plugging in a new hard drive into a different connection on the motherboard than it would have been plugged into while carrying out the clone.

Any help or advice would be very much appreciated.

Chris.

[lloydie]

i asked on the honda forum for you and got a reply .

Done it loads of times, I personally would use the dos version of symantec ghost which will clone the complete disk from old to new and allow you to resize the space to fill up the new disk or you can leave some or all that space free then create a new partition in Windows later on.

If you can download torrents then search for "Hiren Bootcd", it has everything you need although the newer versions (after v10) have dropped Ghost in favour of Driveimage XML and GLGhost4Linux which can do the job but are slightly harder to use. The Hiren CD iso once burned is bootable. I'd look for a v10.xx version to get Ghost if going this route.

One other thing, once cloned and prior to booting, remove the old disk to ensure Windows is booting you new disk and not the old. You cna re-add later if you want 2 drives in the PC.

Last thing, I agree mostly with Andy, if you have your Windows CD and license key, then installing a fresh copy of XP, adding drivers, Service Pack 3 then redownloading and adding all you favorite programs and none of the crap is the way to go for a speedier system especially if your current XP has never been freshly installed.

http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd <-- Info on the Hiren CD although as it contains some copyrighted programs you can only download it elsewhere


Alternativly, some disk manufacturers have disk imaging utilities you either get with the disk (if retail packaging) or you might be able to download from their website. These utilities if they exist usually only work with that manufacturers own NEW disk.

What make disk have you got?

Western Digitals True Image http://support.wdc.com/product/download ... p?swid=119
Seagate's Disk Wizard http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/discwizard/

[sirch345]

I'm well impressed with you Lloydie
Many thanks for doing that, that was very thoughful of you to post my pc problem on another forum Please thank the person who replied, on my behalf.

The information supplied is very helpful and informative. It has confirmed my thoughts of a clean install of Windows XP being the best option for speedier system. The speed (or rather lack of it I should say ) of the old hard drive was one of the reasons in getting a new bigger h/drive.

Interesting to see DriveImage XML being mentioned. I use this software for back-up to an external hard drive. I have tried installing a complete copy onto the new hard drive from the external h/drive back-up, but this didn't seem to work. The new h/drive (when fitted as the main drive with the original removed) wouldn't boot up. Probably a mistake on my part.

The old hard drive is almost 8yrs old and has never had the current XP freshly installed. The new hard drive is a Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 3.5" 1TB SATA Hard Disk Drive 32MB Buffer - OEM.

Cheers,

Chris.

[tasum]

starting with a clean install will give you a good starting point. for speed consider some more ram, if it's cheap enough and get into the habit of archiving and backing up your data so that you can always wipe your drive with no issues.

don't forget to backup/copy your data from your original drive so that you have it somewhere else if something happens. i sometimes email myself compressed data that i don't want to lose and i burn to cd/dvd whenever i remember, having lost all my data once

good luck

[lloydie]

if it helped then your welcome
its all french to me

[lloydie]

i passed on your thanks and he also mentioned -

Main thing when reinstalling XP is to make sure you have downloaded the driver for whatever network card it has and keep in usb stick or ext HD just in case XP doesn't have the driver as standard. Once you have the network card working you can connect to the internet to get hold of any other drivers that might be required

[cliveyandrews]

I'm kinda thinking of doing my next clean install onto an SSD - they're coming down in price and going up in capacity....


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk and my fat thumbs...

[sirch345]

starting with a clean install will give you a good starting point. for speed consider some more ram, if it's cheap enough and get into the habit of archiving and backing up your data so that you can always wipe your drive with no issues.

don't forget to backup/copy your data from your original drive so that you have it somewhere else if something happens. i sometimes email myself compressed data that i don't want to lose and i burn to cd/dvd whenever i remember, having lost all my data once

good luck

Tasum, thanks for your reply Very good advice on doing back-up, something I have got into the habbit of doing

i passed on your thanks and he also mentioned -

Main thing when reinstalling XP is to make sure you have downloaded the driver for whatever network card it has and keep in usb stick or ext HD just in case XP doesn't have the driver as standard. Once you have the network card working you can connect to the internet to get hold of any other drivers that might be required

Lloydie, thanks for passing that on

That tip is spot-on, I've already come up against it. I should have posted this topic on here earlier in hind-sight

I'm kinda thinking of doing my next clean install onto an SSD - they're coming down in price and going up in capacity....


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk and my fat thumbs...

Clivey, my son has been onto me about getting an SSD to use for the OS only, then use the ordinary hard drive for everything else. That way you won't need a large capacity SSD. I'm not going to bother right now, but looking into the SSD's it seems there is some parts of it that are not quite so good as the old style hard drive such as deleting stuff and re-writing (have a look online for yourself if you've not already). If you buy a reasonable quality SSD, that should be fine for the set-up I've just mentioned.
If you do end up getting one lets us know what you think.

Chris.

[Rob]

I have an SSD, awesome, extremely fast!

They are much improved now, especially with Windows 7 and Trim Technology.

I have temporary files and internet cache on a seperate HDD. 8Gb Ram so swap file is turned off. Indexing/search turned off (it's so fast you don't need it anyway)

It's a 120Gb Sata 3 Drive.

According to SSD Life:- (A free monitoring program)

Total 120Gb/Free 41.2 Gb
Work Time 4782 Hours (6 Months 19 Days 6 Hours)
Powered on 606 Times
Health 100%
Estimated Lifetime 8 years 5 months 20 days
End of life March 30, 2021

Data Read Gb 5427
Data Written Gb 1647

So a few simple precautions and it will last many more years than you need it to - much improved from the 'thousands' of write cycles when they first came out - it's now millions.

There really is no excuse no to, especially as they are cheap now

[Phimosis]

What is a hard drive...

[turbo_billy]

What is a hard drive...

Normally concrete........

[Phimosis]

Hey Turbo, do you know peeps from J4R..

[sirch345]

I have an SSD, awesome, extremely fast!

They are much improved now, especially with Windows 7 and Trim Technology.

I have temporary files and internet cache on a seperate HDD. 8Gb Ram so swap file is turned off. Indexing/search turned off (it's so fast you don't need it anyway)

It's a 120Gb Sata 3 Drive.

According to SSD Life:- (A free monitoring program)

Total 120Gb/Free 41.2 Gb
Work Time 4782 Hours (6 Months 19 Days 6 Hours)
Powered on 606 Times
Health 100%
Estimated Lifetime 8 years 5 months 20 days
End of life March 30, 2021

Data Read Gb 5427
Data Written Gb 1647

So a few simple precautions and it will last many more years than you need it to - much improved from the 'thousands' of write cycles when they first came out - it's now millions.

There really is no excuse no to, especially as they are cheap now

Rob, thanks for your opinion on using a SSD and the info on where they are at today.
Your set-up sounds brilliant
8Gb of RAM I thought I was doing OK when I up graded to 2Gb

What processor are you using

Chris.

[Rob]

Intel i5-2500k.

The k is the unlocked one - well worth it I've got it running stable at 5Ghz up from 3.3Ghz stock

Couple of large slow case fans and a huge Zalman CPU cooler so it's very quiet too.

I tend to upgrade in pretty big steps and hope not to touch it again for 5+ years.

[sirch345]

Rob, pretty awesome set-up I'd say
Cheers for the info,

Chris.