Hi


Want to replace my 80Go HDD with a new 120Go one. I have xp with none of SP1 or 2
Thus, it will be C:\ and D:\ (recovery disk). I want then use this 80Go HDD as a slave one. That should be E:\ and F:\ (I will then copy all of my data onto the new HDD)
After I make this change, will my system automatically recognize the new HDD, without any further intervention?

thxs

If you make a complete HD image from your current one and copy it (or restore it) to the new one, and then just make the new one the Master and the old one the Slave and tell the BIOS to boot from the new one first, there shouldn't be any problems. But, since the new drive is larger, that may cause a problem, but then you can always just use a partitioning program and make sure the size is correct. If you want to manually copy the files over, that will NOT work, you must do a full HD image in order for it to successfully work.

Depending on how robust your PE disc is, you can do you everything you need without ever leaving PE.

Firstly, unless your new 120GB HD is significantly faster than your 80GB (7200RPM vs 5400RPM for example), consider leaving everything alone, and merely making your 120GB the slave - nothing to transfer, nothing to change - and your 120GB will then easily be able to handle a couple of full backups of the 80GB drive made with a good backup app (Ghost for example using compression), with plenty of room to spare.

If you must switch, however, all new HD's come with imaging software to transfer data from one to another... but even so, you can still use PE to do all of this for you.

Since PE loads the OS from the CD, files on your HD are not "locked" and can easily be copied from one HD to another. You can copy all the files using ExplorerXP for example. This is what makes PE discs so versatile - you can do things within PE which are not possible from your "normal" OS. I just did this on my slow 500mHz machine and it took 20 minutes.

So it is indeed possible to merely copy the files from one HD to another... of course, you'll have to partition the new HD with a primary (boot) partition...

DW

Copying files has always given me problems, since there are registry things it doesn't want to work with, drive sectors, the MBR, etc, etc. that always seemed to have caused problems. That's why I said to only do it by restoring an image as those have never failed me. But who knows, either way will work I guess.

I've tended to use ghost and true image to clone hdd's without any problems even when one drive is larger than another, the partitions just automaticallly get resized.

Why make the 2nd drive a slave? Keeping it as master shouldn't cause any problems esp if you remove the OS on the 80gb (just check that the 120gb boot's before erasing). Unless of cause you can't be bothered altering and cd/dvd rom jumpers.

If you clone the HDD it will use 100% of the drive, but if you make an image you can resize the drive when finished. The reason is the image is a compressed file, where a clone is not...

Or you could take this opportunity to do a clean XP install on your new hdd. Install your 80 gig as a secondary drive and copy files/folders over as needed... then again, that's just me...