Question re HD copy

[bronan]

I am very close to the limit of full capacity of my Maxtor HD (IDE) and very soon I’ll be forced to replace it with bigger one.
I’d like to keep all my installed OS , programs and files as they are now on my XP Pro SP3 and copy contents of actual HD to new one, using Acronis True Image, or similar programs.
After copying I am planning to change volume of partitions.
Please let me know if this is possible or not.

 

[fisheromacse]

Yes, this should be possible.
I have used Acronis (and Ghost) successfully many times to put a base OS on a machine with a different drive size than the original image's drive.

 

[kjv1611]

Yes, it's definitely possible. There are many tools that'll work with that as well. There's Acronis TrueImage, Norton Ghost, Gparted I think will do some or all this, DriveImageXL is another, I believe.. Image for Windows is another that I like by TerabyteUnlimited - it's a smaller company, smaller program...

In all honesty, if you're using Windows XP in particular, then any version of Acronis True Image will likely be the flat easiest to use.

If you want to go that route, I'd do this:
1. Power off the PC
2. Connect your new drive to your system.
3. Boot with a bootable CD for Acronis - if you don't have one, but have Acronis, I think it has a tool for building one.
4. Use Acronis to copy the drive to drive, and if you want to change the partition sizes in the process, it'll give you "advanced options" to choose how big you want the partitions to be on the new drive.
5. When Acronis is finsihed, shut down the PC.
6. Disconnect the old drive
7. Power up the PC, and remove the Acronis CD if still in the CD drive.
8. See if it worked - it'll be pretty obvious if it did/didn't.

Of course, Ghost works just as well, maybe as easy. I've just found Acronis' products the easiest to use when they work. Some versions of Acronis True Image have given me issues with Windows Vista, but I never had a bit of trouble with XP.

 

[goombawaho]

Just make sure you image the correct way - from old to new. If you do it the other way, all your data and OS will be gone.

Tried that once - not a smart thing to do. Pay attention and you should be able to avoid that mistake. Look at the size and/or name of the disk as you are selecting source/destination.

 

[kjv1611]

Yeah, sorta the old addage, measure twice, cut once... so in this instance, look/read twice (or 3 or 4 times to be sure), and THEN copy.

 

[goombawaho]

Might be a good idea to format the drive attached to another computer and name the volume something snappy (like GUMBY) or whatever so that it might show up in the cloning program. Then you know GUMBY is the new/empty drive.

 

[bronan]

Thanks to all of you for good advices and assistance.
This what I red encourage me and take away one doubt also.