How do I transfer info & the O/S to new drive ????

[RBerry]

I have two 20 gig hard drives, both almost full. if I remove the D drive, then put in a new 60 gig drive as a slave, can I then transfer all of the data, including the O/S to the new drive. Then remove the old 20 gig C/ drive, then rejumper the new drive as a master ( C/drive). Then re install the old D drive as it was. What I'm worried about is the transfer of the operating system & all of the programs.

Thanks for any help.

Bob

 

[klenger]

You could use a disk imaging program if you have a temporary drive or network drive to use for the image. It creates an image of the disk, and then you restore the image to the new drive. The software compensates for the larger drive space. The data files from your D: drive can just be copied over. Could you leave your C: drive the way it is, and replace your D: dive with the new one? Then your OS doesn't change. Another option would be to do a build from scratch for the new drive, and reinstall the OS and applications. It seems like Windows runs better is it's rebuilt once-in-a-while anyway.

 

[RBerry]

klenger, if I leave the c: drive as is & add the new drive as D: drive, how would I get the 18 gigs of data from the old drive moved to the new D; drive

 

[dremelts]

I agree with klenger - you're going to have to use a drive imaging program; PowerQuest makes some good products for this type of thing.



First, remove your D: drive and replace it with the new (BIG) drive. Image from C: to BIG. Now you have everything from your original C: drive on the BIG drive, including the OS. Reconfigure the BIG drive to be the master drive, remove C: put D: back in and boot from BIG. Now what you have is identical to your original configuration; your boot drive has the OS on it and all the apps/data that it had before plus a bunch of empty space and your second hard drive has not been touched.



I would recommend leaving it that way because there may be programs that are configured to refer to information that is on D: and if your D: drive is still there you won't have to find and reconfigure all those programs.



If you don't want to leave the D: drive in then simply copy everything from D: to BIG, then remove D:



Just a word of caution: when using disk imaging software make VERY sure that know which drive is the source and which is the destination. Don't rely on drive letters because the drive letter assignments can be different than what they were originally.

 

[Power Wagon]

Maxtor drives come with a little floppy. Install your new drive as a slave, boot from the floppy. The program on the floppy will set up your drive to get a drive letter (what FDISK does), format it, and then image the data from your old primary drive to the new one. It transfers everyting, including OS.



It's kinda slow, btw. It took nearly an hour for me, and I had only 6. 5 gigs of data to move.

 

[RBerry]

klenger, dremelts, Power Wagon,



You guys are great. I really appreciate the help. I know what I have to do now. It is amazing the kind of help a person can get on the TDR.



Thanks for the help.

Bob