Harddrive transplants

Wednesday, January 18, 2006 by Thomas Thomassen | Discussion: Hard Drives

I would like to duplicate the content of one harddrive onto a second smaller harddrive. The source harddrive contains an OS and I want to be able to replace the original (larger) harddrive with the smaller one and still have the OS working.
Can anyone suggest a safe and easy software to perform this task? No need to be free, but I'm a student with not too much to spend so, keep it reasonable, ok.
20 Reply 23 Referrals
greg2
Reply #1 Wednesday, January 18, 2006 12:28 PM
best program for that is NORTON'S GHOST program [around 30 dollers] at bestbuy's it will take the whole drive including boot sector and transfer it all to the other drive as a footnote if th OS you are transfering is xp you must put the new drive back in the comp you have just transfered it out of because XP has a piracy program in it which will shut the OS down if it thinks it has been put in a new computer it is to keep poeple from buying 1 copy of XP and putting on as many computer's as they feel like hope that helps you

thomassen
Reply #2 Wednesday, January 18, 2006 2:50 PM
I plan to keep the harddrive as a storage drive. Just want to transfer the content and OS to a different drive. I looked at Ghost but I thought it was a file backup utility and not a harddisk copy utility. I thought Norton Partition Magic was made for that,

BX
Reply #3 Wednesday, January 18, 2006 3:22 PM
Ghost is the best solution -- It is an HDD Raplicator ...

Inge18
Reply #4 Wednesday, January 18, 2006 4:02 PM
Or you try Casper XP, it's very easy to use – you can make full hard disk copies while Windows is running.

Link

XX
Reply #5 Wednesday, January 18, 2006 4:03 PM
There's fre free programs that can make system images and transfer the images into new hard drive.


http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-knopx.html?ca=dgr-lnxw02-obg-SysRecover


Actually, THIS is better way. http://www.ubcd4win.com/

thomassen
Reply #6 Wednesday, January 18, 2006 4:22 PM
Hm. Interesting. Remember that one of my requirement is that I am moving the content to a smaller harddisk. Does these utilites do that?

yrag
Reply #7 Wednesday, January 18, 2006 4:52 PM
Is this a proprietary computer with an OEM XP version?

thomassen
Reply #8 Wednesday, January 18, 2006 7:12 PM
It's a custom built miniITX system. I'm making a media center for my final major project. "OEM", what does that stand for? If it means it came with the system like my Dell for instance, then it is not an OEM version as it started out as a completely clean system.

XX
Reply #9 Wednesday, January 18, 2006 7:17 PM
Hmm.. Good question, actually. Maybe there's a utility to strunk your NTFS partation to fit the new hard drive before making an image?

yrag
Reply #10 Wednesday, January 18, 2006 9:22 PM
As long as you have an XP CD/serial#, then you're fine. The size difference doesn't matter. Go to the drive manufacturer's site (actually, you can use any) and download the file for a floppy install of the hard drive. Boot up the floppy and follow directions to format and transfer files to new drive. When it's done, boot into the bios and change the boot sequence. You may want to disconnect the old drive and make sure all the files got transfered correctly. If all is well, reconnect the old drive and format it to use for storage.

thomassen
Reply #11 Thursday, January 19, 2006 4:40 AM
Sounds good. Except... no floppy... I haven't used one for many year now so I didn't even consider getting one. All though, I have to find a solution for that because I also want to flash the BIOS. I'm trying to find a way to make a bootable USB stick. But the solutions I find require me to copy the boot image I make on a floppy first. doh! I'll dig around to see if I can find an old floppydrive lying around.

CerebroJD
Reply #12 Thursday, January 19, 2006 7:59 AM
C'mon, you MUST have and old floppy drive somewhere... o_0

starkers
Reply #13 Thursday, January 19, 2006 9:56 AM
Western Digital have a proggy that'll do what you're looking for, like Ghost it will transfer an OS drive to another and format it for you etc, and reformat your original drive to storage etc...then all you need is to change your boot sequence in BIOS

Link

Hope this helps....BTW it may say for WD drives, but I've used it with success on Seagates, maxtors, etc.

Island Dog
Reply #14 Thursday, January 19, 2006 11:07 AM
Usually every HD manufacturer has some kind of utility for this. Just search their website.

thomassen
Reply #15 Thursday, January 19, 2006 11:42 AM
hehe. I know I have one back home in Norway. But I am currently in England for my studies and didn't bother a floppy disk.

Thanks for you help guys. I appreciate it.

thomassen
Reply #16 Thursday, January 19, 2006 11:46 AM
hm... wait a minute! There's a floppy sitting in the DELL I'm on atm! Completely forgot about that! I think I have never used the bugger. But I don't feel like taking the DELL apart just for that. Does the boot disk have to be made on the same system it boots? They both run XP Pro. ... hm... right, I got a floppydrive now... now I need a floppydisk...


...the old 3.5" floppies aren't really floppy though. the old 5-1/4" where though... follollop! .... think I saw someone making quite nice retro CD cases out of them...

XX
Reply #17 Thursday, January 19, 2006 1:19 PM
What about those old very large ones?

Anyway, I just used imaging software found on ultimate boot disk to backup my brand new windows xp installation. What's so amazing is it takes only 4 GB to hold 7 GB worth of data, or almost 40 GB partition. It's called (something) XML.

I don't need to ever reinstall windows xp, office, and some core programs ever again!

Double Zero
Reply #18 Thursday, January 19, 2006 9:21 PM
Anyway, I just used imaging software found on ultimate boot disk


There are actually 3 or 4 Hard Drive cloning utilities on UBD, not to mention a load of other nifty utilities... Be careful though using some of the stuff on that disk without first reading the instructions can ruin your day....

thomassen
Reply #19 Friday, January 20, 2006 5:42 AM
Floppy poppy moppy! gaarh! It's impossible to find a floppydisk in this house. I am not going to buy a pack of 50 floppies nomatter how cheap they are. I dont want'em. just need one! for two minutes! what sort of evil person forces you to use floppies in 2006?! blargh!

Fourth Letter
Reply #20 Monday, August 28, 2006 9:16 PM
forget Norton ghost , Acronis True Image 9 is what you want ! it will clone , backup and even copy from damged disks quite well.

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