Looking for Hard Drive Copying Software - Any help? (1 Viewer)

[Chet_F]

Thanks for looking. I am in need of a software package that can copy my existing 10GB hard drive to a 100GB hard drive. Then I should be able to just take out the 10GB drive and boot from the 100GB drive. Any recommendations out there?

Thanks again

Chet_F

 

[Jimmie Lee]

Norton Ghost 2003.

 

[Mark Frank]

I recommend Norton Ghost as well.

BTW - this belongs in the Computer forum.

(Admin note - thread has been moved).

 

[Julian Reville]

I've used Drive Copy to do this (although the largest drive I have used is 40Gb) sucessfully. Very easy using WIN98.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

Ghost 2003 is really the best for this kind of job, but it seems daft to pay for it for this one instance.

You can always reinstall the OS onto the new drive and then copy the rest of the files across manually.

 

[Steve Berger]

I thought most new drives came with this software. My Western-Digital did ; so did my Seagate , I think. If you have at least one WD drive you can probably download their Data Lifeguard Tools and use it. It won't work if none of the drives are WD however.

 

[Scott L]

Can I ask a dumb question... Can't you just copy and paste everything on the original drive to the new drive? Will that work?

 

[Mike__D]

Can I ask a dumb question... Can't you just copy and paste everything on the original drive to the new drive? Will that work?

Normally, no. There are certain system files that are in use and locked, so they can not be copied. However, there are work arounds (Safe Mode). I successfully did just that. Unfortunately, it's late, and I don't recall the exact procedure. I'd hate to give bad advice on something like this.

Your best bet would be to do a google search. While Ghost is powerful software, for a one time job it's overkill. However, if you partition your 100 GB drive, you can keep a backup Ghost copy of your boot partition, on a different partition, in case of emergency.

Mike D.

 

[Steve_Ch]

I THINK (not sure) XP has build in utility for drive migration.

 

[JohanD]

I have done it sucessfully with regular windows backup. Of course you would need some sort of "buffer" storage. I used an external 80GB USB drive. If you have some type of buffer storage then you can transfer this way. And no you won't be able to just cut/paste or drag/drop the files, as windows will complain when you try to copy system files that are in use. (IE system.dat, etc)

Norton Ghost is the best option..

 

[Michael*K]

Carbon Copy Cloner

 

[PaulT]

I have used both Norton Ghost and Powerquest Drive Image. Wound up continuing with Drive Image.

As Steve said, try the website of your Drive manufacturer for their free products to do the same thing.

here's some of the Majors:
Maxtor:
http://www.maxtor.com/en/support/downloads/index.htm
Seagate:
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/utils.html
Western Digital:
http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp

If you purchase one of the Imaging programs you will be able to use it later for Backups.