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EIDE Harddrive Migration\Upgrade 2

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rpearson

Technical User
Jul 25, 2002
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Seeking advice on Migrating \ Upgrade HD's. Both procedural and software advice would be great. Thanks.

 
Can you be a little more specific?

Transferring drives from one PC to another can be as simple as disconnect from one PC and connect into a another.

However, there are many things that can complicate or even hamper it.

So for starters? do any of the drives have an Operating system on them that you wish to boot from after having migrated?

If so what Operating system?

If you want to upgrade what do yo wish to upgrade to?

Do you intend to keep the data on the drives or wipe them clean?

Any other relevant information about the new and old systems.





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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.
 
This is a full data , OS migration from one EIDE drive to another, new , larger EIDE. Drive only transfer. MS XP platform , desktop.

Seeking aditional expert advice. Thanks.

 
This may or may not work depending on your situation, but it sounds like the best way would be to image the old drive to the new one. There are various imaging softwares available (Norton Ghost, Imagecast, etc.) that will facilitate this migration.
 
I would agree, if all you want to do, is copy the contents of one drive to another, you can image the drive.

I would recommend something like Acronis True Image to get the job done.

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Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.
 
Rather than pay for software, just use the new drive manufacturer's utility - they've nearly all got one that will let you clone old drive to their new one. One point - after doing the clone/copy, make sure you disconnect old drive before trying to boot new - or you'll have drive letter issues.
 
Cloning, as wolluf suggested would be best in this situation, not imaging. If the old drive is imaged to the new one, all you would end up with on the new drive is an image file. Follow wolluf's advice and you should be good.

You also asked for procedures, which hasn't been answered. A bit more info regarding the old and new drives would be helpful. Are both IDE, SATA, or a mix?
 
Yes. these will both be EIDE interfaced.



 
Imaging would allow you to create an image to, for instance, an external USB hard drive, remove the old drive from the system, install the new one, and restore the image from the USB drive to the new drive. Software to do this has been mentioned, Acronis True Image (my preference). I see no mention of cloning abilities in Ghost 12.0

Cloning requires both drives to be installed at the same time. How many IDE controllers does your motherboard have? Each controller can support a maximum of two IDE devices. You will need a free spot on an IDE cable to hook your new drive to and a free 4-pin molex power connector.

Devices on an IDE cable require jumpering: either both as cable-select (CS) or one as Master and the other as Slave. When cable-select is used, positioning on the IDE cable determines Master and Slave. The Master drive will be at the end of the cable and the slave in the middle. If the device is alone on a cable, it is usually set to Master or cable-select, and is best placed at the end of the cable.

You will also need an 80-conductor cable for the new drive. Chances are you already have this in your system.
See
Before imaging or cloning, consider backing up all important data to something other than your current old drive. Accidents happen and you don't want to lose irreplaceable data.

To clone your system, leave the current drive in place. Install the second drive, paying attention to the jumpering. Start the cloning software. When choosing Source and Destination drives, BE SURE THEY ARE SPECIFIED CORRECTLY I can't overstress that enough. There is nothing worse than cloning an empty drive to your working drive resulting in complete data loss.

I hope this helps. Post any questions you may have. And forum readers will be sure to correct or add things they see.
 
There are actually different types of imaging. Cloning being a type of imaging, rather than a separate process. You can also image to a file, which is what Freestone seems to be referring to when mentioning "imaging". Imaging basically refers to the process of taking a hard drive and making a complete copy in some way. As I said, this can be done with a "clone" or with an image file (both of which are essentially backups of a drive that you could boot from). As far as I can tell Ghost 12 should image (or clone) a drive. It just seems like they have taken to calling it a "backup" rather than an image (or clone).

In short, you do want to image the drive, by using the "clone" option.
 
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