Hard Disk Copying! HELP!

[lordpablo12]

Ok, so i wanted to upgrade my main drive, the internal one, to a bigger size. But what i wanted to do is totally copy the whole thing. I want to copy it to another hard drive, so that hard drive makes it seem like nothing has ever happened. Every single file, including the boot files all the way to media video files, will still be there, just on a bigger hard drive. If anyone knows how to do this or any software that will help i greatly appreciate it..THANKS!

 

[Atomic Rooster]

There should be software available from the drive manufacturer's website that will clone the old drive to the new one.

 

[eyeCpc]

Simply copying a partition from one to another one won't make it bootable or see the OS load. Cloning is the usual term when both drives are on two identical systems using imaging softwares.

The first two problems that would be seen for example is seeing the 232gb of a 250gb drive copied to the 465gb available on a 500gb model. oops! plenty of empty space left over as well as not seeing any mbr entries created for the OS. Why won't the OS load? No boot active boot information.

The best option is to use the file and settings or backup utility available depending on which version of Windows or OS you are running to preserve all that for a clean install on the new "larger sized" drive then seeing what is needed to then restore everything you could from the backups made.

One popular retail program for things like this is Acronis. That's an updated software that will work with Vista as well as XP. There's also a few free editions for home use provided as well like PC Disk Clone seen at http://www.pcdisktools.com/pcdiskclone.htm
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/trueimage/

 

[lordpablo12]

Thanks helps alot!