Replacing a hardrive.

[FloOFy]

Hey, I've never installed a hardrive before so I'm pretty new. Anyway, I'm not sure of how to clone data from my old hardrive (SATA 250gb, 8mb cache) to a new one (500gb, 32mb cache). I plan on using HD Clone:

http://www.miray.org/download.php

to clone my data by burning it to a bootable CD. So my question is, what do I do to my new hardrive? Do I just plug it in, boot up my computer, then copy my data? Then that's it? Or do I have to format before I do this?

OS: Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit (SP-1)

 

[vacunita]

If you are going to clone, you don't need to do anything to the new drive. Cloning will essentially copy over any formatting you have in your older hard drive to the new
one.


Basically all you'll want to do is plug the new drive in an available SATA port.

Turn on the machine, and boot to the CD, then point the cloning software to the source drive, and the destination drive.

Once the cloning process is complete, remove your old drive, replace it with the new drive, by putting it into the same SATA port where the old one was, and start the machine up again.

If all went well, it should boot into your installation of Windows without any problems.

At this point you could format the 250Gb and use it as storage or do whatever you want to it.



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

 

[wahnula]

A couple of tips on this whole process: MAKE SURE THE CLONE IS GOING THE RIGHT WAY from the old drive to the new drive. And shutoff your PC after cloning and before re-boot to avoid getting the drive labeled with a different letter than C:

Other than that you'll be good to go. And, as a safety procedure, I always keep the original drive around for at least a week to be sure all the cloned data made it to the new HDD.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[FloOFy]

Ok, after the cloning is complete how do I format my old hardrive? I know how to format a hardrive through Windows by right clicking on computer. But before I do that when I plug in both my hardrives which hardrive would boot Windows? And before formatting do I have to switch any RAID configurations around?

 

[vacunita]

Ok, after the cloning is complete how do I format my old hardrive? I know how to format a hardrive through Windows by right clicking on computer.

That would be the easiest choice. Just format it through Windows.

But before I do that when I plug in both my hardrives which hardrive would boot Windows?

The position of the drives, coupled with the BIOS settings should determine which drive the machine will boot from.

Make sure the new drive is connected where the old one was before booting, and double check the bios order so that it points to the new drive.

And before formatting do I have to switch any RAID configurations around?

No RAID, since its only one drive RAID is not applicable in any fashion.




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

 

[wahnula]

Again, MAKE SURE YOU ARE FORMATTING THE CORRECT DRIVE. And, to be safe, disconnect any external drives and remove any USB keys, etc. before formatting. Double and triple-check your choices before doing the deed.

95% of all people who have been fiddling with PCs for more than a little while have formatted the wrong drive or cloned the wrong way...and the other 5% are liars.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[G0AOZ]

As Tony says, check, double check, and triple check. And don't do this sort of work when you're tired or full of beer!

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[kjv1611]

I've NEVER formatted the wrong drive or deleted the wrong folder's files or...


--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[kjv1611]

I've also never answered "yes" on an old Windows 95 machine when it asked "Your computer is running out of space, to finish this installation, you can create boot disks to free up space first. Do you want to continue?".


--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me