Replacing HD

[failurbydesign]

I about to replace my brothers hd with a bigger drive, is there anyway i can hook it up as a slave and have it copy all the info from one to the other. So i can use the slave (whihc is bigger) as the new Hd???? I dont want to have to burn dvd's or cd's or any crap like that.....

 

[kcnychief]

Sure you can -

Check your jumper settings, hook the bigger drive (if you want to go that route) up as the slave, and then go into Disk Management - format and assign it a drive letter.

Should be easy

 

[madmatt]

Is the drive ATA or SATA?

If ATA you can leave both drives as "CS" ("Cable Select") and make the older drive the secondary (using the cables -- they should be labeled master and slave or something along those lines).

If SATA you would make the older drive the secondary (port 1, 2, or 3) and make the new drive primary (port 0).

 

[LeeJend]

CS will only work if you have a CS cable which most peopel don't.

There are 2 ways to do "replace" the existing drive. I assume you mean you want the new drive as the only one or at least as the C: boot drive.

The easiest way is to image the original drive onto the new drive. Everything will be copied over, data files, operating system, DRM licences, programs. The two imaging tools that are recommended are either norton ghost (I have not used it lately but it gets a lot of recommendations at OSNN) or my favorite, the Western Digital utility CD (which will only work if both drives are western digital). Do not boot with both HD's installed or windows may assume you are hacking a copy of it and corrupt the track 0 on one of the drives. Remove the old drive and set the new drive jumper to "neither". You should boot up just like before but with the new drive installed.

The other method is to install the new drive as slave (on IDE) or just plug it in if it is SATA. For IDE the original drive jumper must be set as master and the new drive as slave. Using the manufacturers utility CD (or windows) format and partition the new HD as desired and make the first partition a bootable system partition. Next install windows on the new HD then use the windows transfer wizard to transfer all your data, licences, files, etc. When done pull out the original HD and set the new HD jumper to single drive. Now you install all the programs you use, again. Yes, this takes forever but leaves you with a nice clean (faster) install. Once you are sure everything has been transfered and reloaded ok you can either keep the old drive as a backup or change it's primary partition to non-system and use it for more storage. Note, as always, windows may give you fits doing this if it decides that you are trying to hack an install and mess up track 0 on one drive.

 

[RickyC]

CS will only work if you have a CS cable which most peopel don't.

All UDMA cables 'should' support cable select. It would need to be a very old machine not to have one of these cables.

 

[madmatt]

I agree. I haven't dealt with a computer that doesn't support CS in a long time.

 

[Not Bman]

CS will only work if you have a CS cable which most peopel don't.

There are 2 ways to do "replace" the existing drive. I assume you mean you want the new drive as the only one or at least as the C: boot drive.

The easiest way is to image the original drive onto the new drive. Everything will be copied over, data files, operating system, DRM licences, programs. The two imaging tools that are recommended are either norton ghost (I have not used it lately but it gets a lot of recommendations at OSNN) or my favorite, the Western Digital utility CD (which will only work if both drives are western digital). Do not boot with both HD's installed or windows may assume you are hacking a copy of it and corrupt the track 0 on one of the drives. Remove the old drive and set the new drive jumper to "neither". You should boot up just like before but with the new drive installed.

The other method is to install the new drive as slave (on IDE) or just plug it in if it is SATA. For IDE the original drive jumper must be set as master and the new drive as slave. Using the manufacturers utility CD (or windows) format and partition the new HD as desired and make the first partition a bootable system partition. Next install windows on the new HD then use the windows transfer wizard to transfer all your data, licences, files, etc. When done pull out the original HD and set the new HD jumper to single drive. Now you install all the programs you use, again. Yes, this takes forever but leaves you with a nice clean (faster) install. Once you are sure everything has been transfered and reloaded ok you can either keep the old drive as a backup or change it's primary partition to non-system and use it for more storage. Note, as always, windows may give you fits doing this if it decides that you are trying to hack an install and mess up track 0 on one drive.

I would have to agree with the first choice, it is the easiest way.

 

[failurbydesign]

yea i want to image the old drive to the bigger hard drive, so use norton ghost?

 

[kcnychief]

Norton Ghost, or a similar program (I have become quite fancy to Acronis Disk Image of late), will probably be your easiest option.

Can normally have the whole thing done within 20-25 minutes

 

[lancer]

1) move both jumpers on both hard drives to "CS", all computers support this, i highly doubt your machine is more than 10yrs old?!

2) connect the old drive to the secondary plug on the drive ribbon, (the gray cable that attach's your HD to your mobo) if it does not say secondary it will be the middle plug. Then attach your new drive to the "primary" or end plug, this one is usually blue or at least it is the one closest to your middle one. then plug the other end into your mobo.

3) Reboot, reinstall xp on new drive and there you have it. the old is now the secondary drive.