How to ugrade C; drive

[thesper]

I have a WIN2K Dell with a 3-partition 40GB HD that is running out of space. I have offloaded everything I can to an external HD but still find myself having to reformat the partitions to give C: enough space. I would like to replace the internal HD with something bigger. What is the best way to do this?

 

[vacunita]

Buy a Bigger hard drive.

Although you'll have to reinstall Windows if you plan on discarding the 40GB.

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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.

 

[stduc]

Although you'll have to reinstall Windows if you plan on discarding the 40GB

Not if you use Ghost or Acronis.

IMHO the easiest way to upgrade a boot disk is to mount the new and presumably (much) bigger hard drive as a slave. Use Acronis trueimage to clone the existing drive and set the new partitions to the sizes you want. Then switch the drives around so the original is the slave and visa-versa and boot. If all is well you can re-format the old drive and use it as a backup disk. For example if you make the new C partition 40GB you can use Acronis from time to time to make a clone of the C drive as a backup.

This is best done by building a bootable Acronis CD which trueimage can do. So Windows is not running at the time.

Unfortunately Trueimage is not free. But worth it considering all the things it can do re imaging, cloning and backups.

 

[vacunita]

If you image the original drive onto the newer bigger one you get a 40GB partition on the bigger drive which you then have to resize and muck around with to get it to fill the drive, or in fact create a new partition in the remaining space. in which case you are back to square one, as the 40Gb partition on the new drive is still full. So I see no distinct advantage other than to avoid reinstalling Windows.

----------------------------------
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.

 

[thesper]

Thanks for the info. It's what I am looking for. I hoped there was a way that didn't involve reinstalling Windows.

 

[G0AOZ]

Well I still use Power Quest's Disk Image software, and this will allow you to alter the size of the new partition(s) when you're copying it/them across...

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[stduc]

True image lets you re-size a logical drive while cloning. So you can start with a source of say 10GB and state you want it to clone it to the new drive as a 50GB partition that is bootable.

It will do the same thing from an image backup as well. So if your HDD fails and you buy a bigger one, or even a small one if the data will fit, size is not the issue!

 

[wahnula]

If you image the original drive onto the newer bigger one you get a 40GB partition on the bigger drive which you then have to resize and muck around with to get it to fill the drive

Not so for my cloning tool of choice, Ghost 2003. It also works on servers, unlike Acronis (unless you buy the $700 ver. LOL). All of the larger drive is visible and in the same partition as the clone. I have also cloned larger drives to smaller ones (not full of course).

I also own True Image, and Power Quest Drive Image but PERSONALLY prefer Ghost 2003. There are many Ghost-haters but the 2003 ver. has been berry berry good to me.

Whichever you choose, ALWAYS triple-check the direction of the clone, and ALWAYS make sure the cloned drive is bootable before formatting the old!

Tony

 

[ASG0856]

One presumes you've tried a bit of housekeeping. Running Disk clean up, and ditching restore points can retrieve an awful lot of space

 

[wolluf]

I think just about all cloning apps allow resizing - including the free ones that drive manufacturers provide on their websites (so you can move an old drive to their new one).

I've been using Ghost 2003 for years happily - but have recently started using True Image, which has the edge in my opinion.