Question

Replacing a hard disc - Best approach ?

Asked by: DutchExpert

Hi,
purchased a 2nd hand PC. formatted hard disc and installed Windows XP professional. Now I notice that my hard disc is really to small and I find it slow. Have a nice / better hard disc that I wish to use (couple of Gb bigger) and wish to replace my hard disc without having to do a painful reinstallation.
So can I do the following or should I consider somethgin else ?
1) install my new hard disc (slave on IDE channel)
2) Start windows in dos mode (still possible ?)
3) perform a copy / xcopy of data from one drive to the other.
4) shutdown the PC
5) switch the dhard disc so that my new hard disc becomes the master
6) Start / boot my PC and wipe all data from old HD ??

All suggestions are welcome.
\thanks
/Lennard

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Asked On
2005-12-16 at 12:22:06ID21667508
Tags

disc

,

hard

,

replacing

Topic

General Computer Systems

Participating Experts
4
Points
500
Comments
6

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Answers

 

by: MrBillisMePosted on 2005-12-16 at 13:33:31ID: 15501157

Since it sounds like you just did this recently I would just get the size drive I want and that the machine will accept and do what you did the first time. If you have data one the drive, set it up as a slave and copy the data over to the new drive. Keep in mind a slow drive on the same IDE cable will slow the the faster drive down.

 

by: DutchExpertPosted on 2005-12-17 at 06:35:37ID: 15503929

Hi, not sure I follow you. Are you stating, I better put in the desired size HD and do a complete new install of my PC ? I hope there is a better solution as this costed me a lot of time already.

 

by: stockhesPosted on 2005-12-17 at 15:11:37ID: 15505295

Hi

I have used this free tool a number of times

http://www.xxcopy.com/index.htm#download

Else you can try ghost, not sure if you can find a free version though.

A normal copy won't do because of files in use  and so

 

by: nobusPosted on 2005-12-18 at 05:06:27ID: 15506564

you can do what you said above, but mind this :
-first check if your system supports a bigger drive; you have many systems which drive size is limited by the manufacturer, to 20, or 64 Gb. you should check it first at the manufacturers site.
since you neither mentioned the motherboard or pc model, or the disk models,
here some info about disk size limits :

http://www.dewassoc.com/kbase/hard_drives/hard_drive_size_barriers.htm

 

by: thomaswrightPosted on 2005-12-19 at 16:07:01ID: 15515396

I do this all of the time. I agree that Ghost is your best bet. You can boot with a floppy drive with both drives in and clone one to the other (Make sure you do the right ones!).

 

by: DutchExpertPosted on 2005-12-20 at 12:51:55ID: 15521715

Hi thank you for the replies. I will go for the Ghost approach as I actually do have that on a cd (but never really understood what it was about . not that I looked at it in details...:-0 ).
thanks for the feedback!

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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