Data Transfer from one hd to another in xp pro 1

[dubruoy]

A few days ago, my 60gb Western Digital Eide hd gave me a S.M.A.R.T. error which was confirmed by their diagnostic software. I bought a new 80gb and have installed windows xp pro on it (same as the 60gb) both activated. I had the old drive set up with one partition which I decided was a mistake and set the new one up with 3. Therefore, I can't use the wd utility to copy everything from the old to the new and I'm not so sure that is a good idea anyhow.

My problem is that I need to get my data from one to the other. I have a cd and dvd burner so I could do it that way but I was wondering if I would encounter problems just setting the old drive as a slave to access the data. I had a problem awhile back when I left the old drive in another computer and installed xp pro on a new drive, then when I removed the old drive, xp would not boot. Thanks to linney and wolluf, I got that one fixed. I thought this time, I would check first, then try it.

 

[BaudKarma]

Should work fine. Just don't set it up that way and figure you can transfer you data over whenever it's convenient. If your old drive is going bad, it could die on you at any time.
Hook it up, grab your data, then unplug it. If you find out you missed something later, you can plug it back in again.



I try not to let my ignorance prevent me from offering a strong opinion.

 

[dubruoy]

BaudKarma, thanks. That's what I planned to do because of the S.M.A.R.T. error. I was concerned that xp pro might see itself on the other drive and wreak havok. So, I will go ahead and get this drive all done then hook the old one up as a slave, pull data over and make a quick exit. One last thing, have you heard any remedy for that kind of error? I know it is a diagnostic pgm telling me that the drive is on its last leg but would low level format or anything maybe fix it or is it just terminal?

 

[BaudKarma]

That's hard to say. S.M.A.R.T montitors a bunch of different parameters, and it's possible that your drive could fail one of them (say, spindle spin-up time) and yet still function fine otherwise for years. On the other hand, it could blow up tomorrow.

It can't hurt to try a reformat once you're sure you've gotten all your data off of it. If you do that and diagnostics report it as OK, you could put it back on your system for extra space. Just be careful about trusting any critical data to it for a few weeks.



I try not to let my ignorance prevent me from offering a strong opinion.

 

[dubruoy]

Thanks BaudKarma. I'll reformat when I'm done and see what it says but I spect it's dust. I think it's out of warranty too now that WD only offers 1 year. Oh, well, drives are fairly cheap now, eh?

Thanks again.

 

[mainegeek]

dubruoy,
How full is the 60gig and what are the partition sizes on the new 80gig?