Hrothgar

I have 2 40gb hard drives and they are close to full. I want to buy a Western Digital Special Edition 120gb HD. How can I go about transferring all my data, i.e.(OS, programs, etc) from my 2 old hard drives onto my new one?

g33k

there are programs to transfer a windows install (and all data on the partition).

many people recommend norton ghost, but I never used it and I don't know much about it.

I have used drive paragon drive backup enterprise twice to transfer a system from one drive to another and both times the transfer was flawless.

whale

take out your cd rom drive. and plug the 120gb in. this will be temporary don't worry.

You will have 3 drives. do your transfers.

Warning. Do not mess around with your C drive (or your boot partition).

Once you're done. plug out the non-boot 40gb hard disk. plug your cd rom in it's place. sell your extra 40gb.

would be alot more helpful if you can tell us how you partition your existing drives. also what o/s yer on. but anyways ...

good luck

Hrothgar

Thanks for the replies so far. I use XP as my OS. As to how I partition my hard drives I'm not quite sure I understand what that means. If I do it your way Whale then how would I transfer the data? Using the previously suggested programs?

gxman

You'd have 3 harddrives correct (or will when you get the new one). Take out all your drives, remember what one is your C drive, hook up your new drive to it, set you new drive as slave (your C should already be master) you can do this cause your cable should have a spot for a second connection.
Now take your other 40 gig and make it master, take your CD drive make it slave. Put them on the same cable. Plug them all back in, start up your computer.
Now you will have 200 gigs of storage and still have your CD drive.
Just move data at will between them, but when you have that extra space you don't really need to.

As for doing the above mentioned ideas I wouldn't, they are just too complex, this way is much simplier and you don't have to sell one of your 40 gig drives. I actually don't follow any of the logic above.
My way assumes you do have a motherboard with 2 ide channels and cables that you can connect 2 drives to, which damn near everything has had in the last 3 or so years.
As far as partitioning, you could try with fdisk but I strongly recommend against it, espically when I saw you were considering buying Ghost to do the file transfers. (How can that guy recommend strongly a product he has no expierence using anyway.) If you were going to buy anything buy Partition Magic, it does partitions real easily, and then that will also help optimize your 120 gig drive, just divide it into smaller segments because they are more efficient. At biggest I'd recommend 4 30 gig segments.

guthmund

It depends on if you want to start fresh with a new hard drive or transfer all the bloat. It also depends on what you plan to do with all the hard drives.

If you want two hard drives (a 40Gb and 120Gb) then whale is dead on just replace your CD-ROM with the new hard drive; transfer all the stuff from the non-bootable 40Gb and then put it all back together with your brand new 120Gb replacing the now defunct 40Gb. Transferring is easy; you'll see your new drive along with the other and you can copy the info over.

If you're looking to put it all on the 120Gb, you've still got some questions to answer.

If you're looking to start fresh with a new install. Replace the bootable drive with your 120Gb drive (make sure you set the jumpers right) and then install XP. Before you boot, replace the CD-ROM with the bootable 40Gb. Again, all the drives should show up and you can copy what you need to.

If you're just looking to drop the whole mess onto the 120Gb, bloat and all, then I would suggest using Norton Ghost. I've used it a few times and I've had no problems.

I just prefer to do it without the software. It appeases my sense of self-accomplishment and a fresh install is like putting on a new pair of pants...........

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whale

hmm yeah ... what gxman & guthmund said.

and i feel the same way as guthmund feels. no 3rd party stuff.

i'll assume you have the proper ide cables (that lets you connect 2 ide/e-ide devices). you have 2 e-ide ports on your motherboard. each port can support 2 ide/e-ide devices : master & slave (harddisks & cdroms usually). ergo, 4 ide/e-ide devices.

since you have 3 drives + 1 cdrom. you're just nice. provided you have the 2 ide cables that lets you connect master & slave. if this is the case, you do not need to take out your cdrom, just connect up your 3rd hard disk.

if not, you'll need to follow my previous reply. but know that you can have 200gb of space ... what gxman and guthmund said. the cables should be easy to obtain and dirt cheap.

finally. if you do it my way or gxman's way. how would you transfer the data? Simply use windows explorer. it's just a matter of copying or moving your data to the new drive.

p.s., you do realise you have to partition & format your new drive don't you? XP isn't it? Goto Start->Settings->Administrative Tools->Computer Management ... Look at Disk Manager. You should be able to do it from there graphically. Careful not to mess with the 40Gbs.

again. good luck.

steveincolumbus

I am thinking its WD that comes with software to copy from one hdd to anouther that way you can upgrade easy.............

hrdwareguy

To do what you want to do, I would reccommend using Norton Ghost or a newer version of Drive Copy by PowerQuest. Copy your old boot drive to the new 120 drive. Remove the old 40 GB boot drive and boot up. Now you can drag and drop data from the second 40 GB to the new 120.

**WARNING**
If you drag and drop any application programs from the secondary 40 GB drive to the new drive, your registry settings for these applications will no longer be correct. Partition Magic may have a utility that will move the data and update the registry for you.

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Banginblaz

You are correct sir! I just got a WD 120Gb and it had everything needed software wise.

If you buy an OEM drive, it might not have it, but it is avalible on their website Here

gxman

Why is there even talk of this? He has 3 drives now, he will have 4, 4 drives fit nicely on 2 IDE channels. HE DOESN'T HAVE TO DO ANY COPYING OF DATA UNLESS HE WANTS TO. Basically he just has 120 more gigs free and the only difference is now he just has a different drive letter that files are stored on.

Ok what he says in his first post, he wants to transfer data, but he hasn't posted back so we don't know if he even knew of the option I presented. But if you just want to transfer data, you can still do it my way, it won't work for installed programs because of the registry, but everything else will.

hrdwareguy

Becuase this accomplishes what the guy asked for. Hey if it were me, I'd do it your way as well.

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