How do I copy one hard drive to another?

[xlav]

Installed a new Seagate SATA hard drive and formatted it with Seagate Disk Utility. The old drive ,Seagate SATA has windows 2000. I restarted the PC and got message 'NTLDR is missing press crtl, alt, del to restart'. The two hard drives were detected at start up. I would like to copy the old drive information to the new drive. How do I do this?

 

[kestrel1]

use cloning software. Norton Ghost or Acronis True image should do the trick.

 

[Freestone]

I've never used it but here is some free cloning software:

http://www.miray.de/download/sat.hdclone.html

 

[xlav]

Do I have to adjust my BIOS boot sequence for the new HDD to work?

 

[kestrel1]

If the drive is in the same position as the old one, you should be OK.

 

[xlav]

To copy the old HDD to the new one both drives would have to be installed. So I don't understand what Kestrel1 means by "If the drive is in the same position as the old one

 

[kestrel1]

Once you have cloned the drive from one to the other, swap the position in the boot sequence.
ie. change the master drive to the slave & vice versa.
You should then be able to boot from the newly cloned drive.
Not played about with sata for a while, you may need to go into the BIOS or the sata controller setup & select the drive to boot from.

 

[burg1]

I'm not sure what you did, but in some cases this fix can help:

http://ntldrismissing.com

But cloning is the best way.

 

[xlav]

I can't get to the cloning stage because when I boot with both hard drives connected I get error 'NTLDR is missing, press crtl+alt+del to restart'. Can boot to the old (system) HDD only with it alone connected. Trying to create a bootable backup system.

 

[kestrel1]

You need to be booting from a CD with the cloning software on it.

 

[xlav]

I booted with Apricorn EZ Gig II Rescue diskettes. The Gig II cloning software came with my Apricorn external hard drive enclosure. The Gig II Wizard walked me through the cloning process and I successfully cloned the hard drive. Thanks for your help.

 

[kestrel1]

Glad to be of assistance.