Hard Drive Transfer 1

[Guest_imported]

I was just wondering if there was a way to copy what on one hard drive over to another and have two separate computers with all the same data stored. Can i do a straight copy and have it work like the original, or do i have to install an os from scratch?

 

[wolluf]

There are a number of ways to do this (depending on your operating system). You can use a utility like Norton (Symantec) Ghost to take image of existing drive and transfer to new. Also, most disk manufacturers have a utility to copy your old disk to new (eg, Maxblast from Maxtor). These are generally available from their websites. If you're running win9x/ME, a straight copy of all files AFTER making new drive bootable (format C: /s or sys C:, where C: is new drive) will generally work. NT/2K/XP are more difficult (you basically need another operating system to do the copy from or a clever utility, as while using NT/2K/XP it doesn't allow you to copy a number of important system files). One thing to note for all methods - if machine you are installing copied system too has different hardware from original (particularly motherboard), most versions of windows will go through a major reinstall of drivers when you boot up for first time (which is some case can result in a non-working system, but generally ok). Also, you may have to (re)install some drivers yourself, if your version of windows doesn't have its own.