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abpowell

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What is the best (safest way) to change out/upgrade a hard drive.

Currently have 120 Seagate slave (from old system), 250 WD current master and external Iomega 250GB.   Want to get rid of the old seagate, make the current master the slave and upgrade the master (looking for more speed).  Can I drag and drop everything onto the iomega and then change out the internal HDs.  Should make an image of all?  I lost everything last time but that was because of new Mobo and other difficulties.  This time only changing HDs.  Thanks for the input.
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jhance

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abpowell

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So I just need software?  No additional hardware.  I do have a DVD burner that I'm assuming I'll need for this?
Not sure what you'd need a DVD for.  The drive image tools work best (IMHO) when you go drive-to-drive.  A 120GB drive will take a BUNCH of DVDs to backup and it will take a lot of time.
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Gary Case
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... by the way (this comment could go with either of your questions, so I'll just put it here), another good reason for creating a relatively small system partition as the first partition on the drive is that the lower blocks have appreciably faster transfer rates than the higher-numbered blocks on the drive.   This is because of the zoned sectoring that all modern drives use.   The transfer rate can be nearly double on the outer cylinders (where the lower numbered blocks are).   So if your system partition is relatively small, the entire system partition will be in the faster outer zones.
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