OT - System Drive Copy

Stonefield wrote on 5/10/2006, 10:10 PM
Hey guys...

Forgive my lack of tech-knowledge ( did I just make up a new word there ? ) ....but I was wundrin...

My C: drive being system drive on my primary computer is doing some funny clicking every now and then. It's a physical problem where the reader seems to be skipping and freezing up the computer. This really isn't a huge problem with me because I can have my system up and running ( and cleaner ) inside of a few days if I have to re-install everything.There is no software conflicts or any problems like that so I'm wondering, would I be able to just buy a fresh drive and do a total disk copy to this new drive ? Operating system and everything ?

This would be great as I wouldn't have to re-install WindowsXP again as well as all my stuff. Also, at the time this computer was built, I had to use a refurbished IBM drive that's only 60 gigs. As you could guess, I wouldn't miss it.

Long story short ( too late ! ) Can I "drive copy" the old drive to a new drive with the operating system intact ?

Comments

apit34356 wrote on 5/10/2006, 10:25 PM
Maybe, ..., Yes you can copy the old disk to a new, larger disk drive using many of disk copying utilities. But some apps reserve specific locations on the system disk, and copying them to a new drive will cause the software to complaint that it is not registered. I believe vegas is one theses, Adobe photoshop CS2 also...
Chienworks wrote on 5/11/2006, 3:38 AM
Both Seagate and WesternDigital include utilities to do this with their new drives. Probably other manufacturers do as well. I've done this for myself and for clients more times than i can remember and it's always gone through without a hitch. As apit pointed out, some software may need to be reregistered/reactivated afterwards. For myself, this has never happened.

Be prepared for a slow process. Western Digital's utility took about 5 hours to transfer 30GB. Seagate's is a little faster, but not by much.
epirb wrote on 5/11/2006, 4:52 AM
Acronis true image is great for that, its also a great program for usaul backups.
Not that yuo want to install another program on your dsk right before it dies, but its worth looking into.
You can make a clone of your drive, it has an auto mode, which basically does the steps for you and make the drive bootable.
meaning when its done you pull out the old drive when complete.
TeetimeNC wrote on 5/11/2006, 5:05 AM
I'll second that. I used True Image to transfer my C: drive to a replacement drive in my laptop - absolutely no issues. I also use it to routinely backup my OS partition and data partition on my laptop and desktop PCs.

>Acronis true image is great for that, its also a great program for usaul backups.

-jerry