Copy hard drive, but not partition size?

Status
Not open for further replies.

Trotter

Grandfather of Techist, ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Staff member
Messages
33,559
Location
The South
I just landed a Seagate 160 gig at BestBuy for $70 (not a bad deal for a brick and mortar, eh?). Anyway, that being said, I have a question.

I want to copy my current hard drive (OS as well as everything else) to my new drive, but I don't want it to come out as a 40 gig partition on a 160 gig drive. I want it to be a single partition. The drive comes with BounceBack Express, and I have borrowed Partition Magic (I hope it works... the disk ain't in great shape). So here's my question...

What program would do the deed and do it right? And, NO, reinstalling Windows and everything else is not a viable option... so don't even go there.

Well?
 
When you have your new hard drive installed, you are ready to copy your old hard drive to the new one. The new hard drive does not need to be formatted.

If the hard drive you are copying contains more than one partition (for example, a C:\ drive, a D:\drive, an E:\ drive, and so forth), you must copy each partition, one at a time, to the new hard drive.

If the power or other hardware fails when you are copying data, no data is lost from the source drive. Should the power or other hardware fail, just start the process again after the failure is resolved.

To copy one hard drive to another

On the menu bar of Norton Ghost, click Tools > Copy Drive.
Follow the instructions in the Wizard to copy the drive.
The Wizard will guide you through selecting the right drive to copy, the destination drive, and the options for copying the data from one drive to another.


This is with Norton Ghost. If the partition is copiedover as 40gb, you can format the remaining drive and merge them in XP
 
Clone Your Hard Drive With Ghost 2003
So you want to upgrade your hard drive to a larger and faster drive but do not want to install the Operating System and programs. The solution, use Ghost 2003.

Here is a short tutorial that will quickly explain how to use Ghost 2003 to clone your hard drive to another hard drive. This is very useful for someone that wants to install a larger hard drive but doesn't want to go through the effort of reinstalling the operating system and all of their programs. When you do this, your new disk should be the same size or larger than the original hard disk.

I will make the assumption that you have the new hard drive installed in the media bay and want to clone the main drive to the media bay hard drive. The new hard drive should already be installed in the media bay. If you need instructions on how to do this, visit these pages if you have a Dell C-Series Notebook or D-Series Notebook. NOTE: This same procedure can be used to Ghost any drive. You will just have to make the correct modifications to the instructions.

I will use the Ghost Wizard to accomplish this task.


Your new drive should already be in the media bay. If it is not, do so before proceeding any further.

Start Ghost 2003. When you see the opening dialog, click on the "Ghost Advanced" button in the left column. Then click on the "Clone" button.

ghost_001.png


When this screen appears, just click on the "Next" button.

ghost_002.png


You need to select your "Source". Since we want to clone the entire disk, click on "Disk 1" in the Source column. This will automatically select all of the partitions.

ghost_003.png


Now you need to select the "Destination" drive. Click on "Disk 2". Since the drive is empty, there are no folders showing.

You may notice that the my Destination Drive is smaller than my Source Drive. I just using it for demonstration purposes.

ghost_004.png


You may or may not see this screen. I have IEEE 1394 enabled. If you see this screen, just click on the "Cancel" button. We will not be using the IEEE 1394 port to transfer the data.

ghost_005.png


Click on the "Next" button.

ghost_006.png


This dialog just informs you what is going to happen next.

Click on the "Next" button.

ghost_007.png


Here is shows you the options that you have selected. We are cloning Disk 1 to Disk 2.

ghost_008.png


Make sure that you have the AC power plugged in.

Then click on the "OK" button and let Ghost perform the cloning. Once it completes, put your new drive in the main hard drive slot. The operating system will detect that you have new hardware installed. Once that is complete, you now have a working clone image of your original hard drive.

ghost_009.png
 
Thanks, Warez.

I'll return the Partition Magic to my bud and see if he has Ghost. If not... I guess I go shopping.
 
why is it that when my friend bought a 160 gig drive, and put it on his PC when he was building it, it only showed up as 120 gigs in the MY Computer key?
 
well, it's a friends problem. He has sp1 Pro Edition. I actually think he bought a 200gig and it only showed 160 or so. He said that he would probably just have to get sp2 and I guess he's right.
 
depending on what drive you have, you need to take off a certain percentage of drive space.

Example:

40gb hdd = 37gb
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top Bottom