Copying windows, system configuration etc, to new hard drive?

2009-02-09 20:21:45

#1

Mr.Dooomed: Find your center.; +752|6592

I've ordered two sata drives from newegg, and I want to know if I can copy my whole system as is over to the new drives without having to reinstall programs or windows xp. Can this be done? And how?

I've made backup sets of my C: drive before, but I've never needed to use them. Do backup sets generally contain windows xp? When restored does it restore the os and put all contents back in their place?

Nature is a powerful force. Those who seek to subdue nature, never do so permanently.

2009-02-09 20:24:23

#2

max: Vela Incident; +1,652|6831|NYC / Hamburg

norton ghost, acronis true image

just image the disk over to another disk

_{once upon a midnight dreary, while i pron surfed, weak and weary, over many a strange and spurious site of ' hot xxx galore'. While i clicked my fav'rite bookmark, suddenly there came a warning, and my heart was filled with mourning, mourning for my dear amour, " 'Tis not possible!", i muttered, " give me back my free hardcore!"..... quoth the server, 404.}

2009-02-09 20:26:00

#3

Mr.Dooomed: Find your center.; +752|6592

Ya, I was reading about imaging. I found this and considered it:

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-windows.htm

I do believe norton ghost is on the ultimate boot cd. I'll have to try it.

Nature is a powerful force. Those who seek to subdue nature, never do so permanently.

2009-02-09 20:27:23

#4

aimless: Member; +166|6389|Texas

Would copying all the files and the registry work too?

2009-02-09 20:29:32

#5

Yellowman03: Once Again, We Meet at Last; +108|6499|Texas

I bought a Seagate Barracuda 1.5tb yesterday and used DiscWizard to image my old harddrive to a partition in the new one. It worked very well. Not sure if it's free for other users, but I think it is.

2009-02-09 20:31:05

#6

Mr.Dooomed: Find your center.; +752|6592

Ya, i'm kinda hoping for something that will make an image of the os and all my programs and personal files, AND be free.

Nature is a powerful force. Those who seek to subdue nature, never do so permanently.

2009-02-09 20:32:10

#7

max: Vela Incident; +1,652|6831|NYC / Hamburg

aimless wrote:
Would copying all the files and the registry work too?

imaging works by just copying everything on the HDD over to the other one. Doing that manually is however pretty much impossible. You need to make sure NTLDR, mount points and all that make is across successfully

_{once upon a midnight dreary, while i pron surfed, weak and weary, over many a strange and spurious site of ' hot xxx galore'. While i clicked my fav'rite bookmark, suddenly there came a warning, and my heart was filled with mourning, mourning for my dear amour, " 'Tis not possible!", i muttered, " give me back my free hardcore!"..... quoth the server, 404.}

2009-02-09 21:02:01

#8

Mr.Dooomed: Find your center.; +752|6592

Well, the good news is I have a copy of Dantz Retrospect Express 6.5 that came bundled with my external HDD. It is what I used to create my previous backups.

The BAD NEWS is, I reformatted my external for NTFS, I backed up what I thought I needed to, but the my documents folder I left because I thought I copied it already, but I did not. Now I do not have the backup set snapshot files for restoration because they were saved in that folder. I got 40 gigs of backups, but no snapshot file to use...

edit: o wait, i found an option for recreating a catalog file from backup set data...seems to be working, looks like i've saved my ass. (And my original my documents folder hopefully)

Last edited by Im_Dooomed (2009-02-09 21:06:02)

Nature is a powerful force. Those who seek to subdue nature, never do so permanently.

2009-02-09 22:09:44

#9

GR34: Member; +215|6809|ALBERTA> CANADA

I used norton gohst when I got a new HDD if you dont want to spend the $$$ you can always get stuff for free you just need to know were to look

2009-02-10 08:25:27

#10

IrishGrimReaper: Field Marshal | o |; +142|6985|Ireland | Monaghan

Well, I just copied all my stuff off a failing drive to another yesterday. I found some programs, but didn't notice they don't recognise NTFS. This is what I did eventually find & use though.

DriveImage(info link).

DriveImageXML(Download link), it's free and can directly clone one drive to another, it's very easy to use. Note though that my Boot loaders did get messed up and I needed to use my Vista CD to repair it, as I couldn't boot into as OS.

Also, Norton ghost etc do work too, but this was a simple free program that worked great bar the boot loaders messing up.

Intel Core i7 CPU 920 @ 4GHz || 3x2 GB OCZ 1600Mhz DDR3 || 80GB Intel X25-M Gen 2 || KFA2 GTX 480 1536Mb ||| Samsung T220 || Xonar DX 7.1 || AV 40 || P6T Deluxe V2 || Win 7 HP 64 Bit || Lian Li P80

2009-02-10 10:40:54

#11

RDMC: Enemy Wheelbarrow Spotted..!!; +736|6829|Area 51

Im_Dooomed wrote:
I've ordered two sata drives from newegg, and I want to know if I can copy my whole system as is over to the new drives without having to reinstall programs or windows xp. Can this be done? And how?

I've made backup sets of my C: drive before, but I've never needed to use them. Do backup sets generally contain windows xp? When restored does it restore the os and put all contents back in their place?

If you have vista you could just insert one of the 2 drives (or another empty one) into your PC. And make a back-up of the windows files onto that harddisk, using the back-up utility in Vista. Atleast thats what I did, put a back-up HD in my PC and made a back-up of Windows. However I do not know if this would work in your situation as well. So what do Max/FreezerPro7/<insert computer geek name here > think of this idea?

I absolutely fail at reading threads.

Last edited by RDMC (2009-02-10 10:44:05)

BF2S Forums Copying windows, system configuration etc, to new hard drive?

aimless wrote:

Im_Dooomed wrote:

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