Will imaging to a larger C drive work?

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David Teich

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My old C drive is 54gb. I already have My Documents on a larger drive but my

program files are close to filling up the C. If I buy a larger drive, have

someone just do a straight image of the existing C into the first 50GB of the

new drive, will XP SP3 boot up ok?
 
"David Teich" wrote in message

news:72DDC0E7-F2EC-4D1B-A0B3-736F2DBD907E@microsoft.com...

> My old C drive is 54gb. I already have My Documents on a larger drive but

> my

> program files are close to filling up the C. If I buy a larger drive, have

> someone just do a straight image of the existing C into the first 50GB of

> the

> new drive, will XP SP3 boot up ok?



It should work just fine for you. I recently fixed my stepdaughter's

notebook that way. She had a 40GB drive that was all but 4GB full, and slow

as molasses in Boston in December (her home). I imaged the existing drive,

then put a new 80GB drive in (the limit for her notebook), wrote the image

to the new drive, and it booted up like nothing had ever happened, only

much, much faster. I use Acronis True Image for the imaging, creating the

boot CD from within the program.

Since it's an image, it was only 40GB on the new drive, so I used Easus

Partition Master Home Edition Free http://www.easeus.com/download.htm to

make it 80GB. It runs directly from Windows, not requiring a reboot.

I did this about 5-6 weeks ago, and she's still happy as can be with it.

--

SC Tom
 
In news:72DDC0E7-F2EC-4D1B-A0B3-736F2DBD907E@microsoft.com

=?Utf-8?B?RGF2aWQgVGVpY2g=?=

wrote:



> My old C drive is 54gb. I already have My Documents on a larger drive

> but my program files are close to filling up the C. If I buy a larger

> drive, have someone just do a straight image of the existing C into

> the first 50GB of the new drive, will XP SP3 boot up ok?



If it's done right, certainly. You don't even have to do the "first

50GB" bit, but move to a larger partition, or even an unpartitioned

larger drive.



I used some Acronis tool a few years back when I got a larger drive for

my laptop. I can't be more precise than that since Acronis seems to

change their product names and descriptions on a monthly basis :-)



Other folks used Norton's "Ghost" to do the same with equal success.



--

Bert Hyman St. Paul, MN bert@iphouse.com
 
"David Teich" wrote in message

news:72DDC0E7-F2EC-4D1B-A0B3-736F2DBD907E@microsoft.com...

> My old C drive is 54gb. I already have My Documents on a larger drive but

> my

> program files are close to filling up the C. If I buy a larger drive, have

> someone just do a straight image of the existing C into the first 50GB of

> the

> new drive, will XP SP3 boot up ok?



When you get the new hard drive, if it is a retail boxed one you may have a

CD in the box, or go to the hard drive manufacturer's web site, and there

should be a utility to allow you do do just what you want to do which is

transfer the entire drive to the new drive. It will copy the entire 54 GB

drive to your new larger drive and "extend" the partition to the maximum

size of the drive or allow you to set the new partition size (depending on

the program they supply.)



If the drive is a bare (OEM) drive do the same to the web site of the

manufacturer and download their program for transferring the contents of the

drive.



Hope this helps, let us know.
 
1st,new hds come in a "raw" state,you must format it before anything

else takes place...Youre best bet for "mirroring" or "cloning" drive to drive

is to use xps "XCOPY", its already installed on XP so no other software is

needed...To do this,set youre new hd as slave to current 54gb,on same IDE

cable (new closest to board),in xp,go to run,type: diskmgmt.msc In msc,

R.click on the new hd,select format,use its default settings.Once thru,close

out msc,return to run,type: XCOPY C:\*.* D:\ /c/h/e/k/r Agree to all in

the

DOS window,once its thru,youre finished.Also,D: being the new hd,if asigned

a diffrent letter,then use it instead...



"David Teich" wrote:



> My old C drive is 54gb. I already have My Documents on a larger drive but my

> program files are close to filling up the C. If I buy a larger drive, have

> someone just do a straight image of the existing C into the first 50GB of the

> new drive, will XP SP3 boot up ok?
 
On Fri, 14 May 2010 14:44:01 -0700, =?Utf-8?B?RGF2aWQgVGVpY2g=?=

wrote:



>

>My old C drive is 54gb. I already have My Documents on a larger drive but my

>program files are close to filling up the C. If I buy a larger drive, have

>someone just do a straight image of the existing C into the first 50GB of the

>new drive, will XP SP3 boot up ok?



I have used Acronis True Image to "auto-magically" fill a new an

bigger drive from an image of a smaller drive. I've also done the

reverse, and shrunk a too-big C-drive to a more reasonable size. (I

don't keep lots of data on my C-Drive.)



The only time this sort of thing hasn't worked for me is where there

was some computer fault in the motherboard etc, and Acronis TI doesn't

work well with a computer which is faulty in any way. (e.g. bad RAM or

similar.)



Ross
 
"Andrew E." wrote in message

news:9A9DF5F5-DA77-48C9-A485-D15A9121524B@microsoft.com...

> 1st,new hds come in a "raw" state,you must format it before anything

> else takes place...Youre best bet for "mirroring" or "cloning" drive to

> drive

> is to use xps "XCOPY", its already installed on XP so no other software is

> needed...To do this,set youre new hd as slave to current 54gb,on same IDE

> cable (new closest to board),in xp,go to run,type: diskmgmt.msc In msc,

> R.click on the new hd,select format,use its default settings.Once

> thru,close

> out msc,return to run,type: XCOPY C:\*.* D:\ /c/h/e/k/r Agree to all in

> the

> DOS window,once its thru,youre finished.Also,D: being the new hd,if

> asigned

> a diffrent letter,then use it instead...

>

> "David Teich" wrote:

>

>> My old C drive is 54gb. I already have My Documents on a larger drive but

>> my

>> program files are close to filling up the C. If I buy a larger drive,

>> have

>> someone just do a straight image of the existing C into the first 50GB of

>> the

>> new drive, will XP SP3 boot up ok?



XCOPY will NOT copy the boot sector and much of the other components of the

hard drive as it will not copy any open files and with Windows running there

are many open files. The /c says to ignore errors and this is the only

reason that the copy process progresses to the end, it allows all errors to

copy or doesn't stop when it hits an open file, just doesn't copy it. Yes

the drive will copy but it isn't complete and it won't run when put in as

the boot drive.
 
In news:9A9DF5F5-DA77-48C9-A485-D15A9121524B@microsoft.com

=?Utf-8?B?QW5kcmV3IEUu?= wrote:



> 1st,new hds come in a "raw" state,you must format it before anything

> else takes place...Youre best bet for "mirroring" or "cloning" drive

> to drive is to use xps "XCOPY", its already installed on XP so no

> other software is needed..



Sorry, no.



If the drive is truly "raw", it has to be formatted and partitioned.



After an XCOPY, the retulting drive will still not be bootable.



--

Bert Hyman St. Paul, MN bert@iphouse.com
 
In news:4bee2959.9569187@news-server.bigpond.net.au rmd@invalid.invalid

(RMD) wrote:



> On Fri, 14 May 2010 14:44:01 -0700, =?Utf-8?B?RGF2aWQgVGVpY2g=?=

> wrote:

>

>>

>>My old C drive is 54gb. I already have My Documents on a larger drive

>>but my program files are close to filling up the C. If I buy a larger

>>drive, have someone just do a straight image of the existing C into

>>the first 50GB of the new drive, will XP SP3 boot up ok?

>

> I have used Acronis True Image to "auto-magically" fill a new an

> bigger drive from an image of a smaller drive. I've also done the

> reverse, and shrunk a too-big C-drive to a more reasonable size. (I

> don't keep lots of data on my C-Drive.)



At the time I cloned my laptop drive, the free evaluation version of the

Acronis product current at the time was fully functional, and I was able

to clone the drive and use all of the tool's features without actually

buying anything. I wouldn't be surprised if that was still the case.



I've since bought copies of Acronis True Image for all of my home PCs

and use it for daily backups.



--

Bert Hyman St. Paul, MN bert@iphouse.com
 
Bert Hyman écrivait news:Xns9D796423EBB8AVeebleFetzer@

207.46.248.16:



> In news:4bee2959.9569187@news-server.bigpond.net.au rmd@invalid.invalid

> (RMD) wrote:

>

>> On Fri, 14 May 2010 14:44:01 -0700, =?Utf-8?B?RGF2aWQgVGVpY2g=?=

>> wrote:

>>

>>>

>>>My old C drive is 54gb. I already have My Documents on a larger drive

>>>but my program files are close to filling up the C. If I buy a larger

>>>drive, have someone just do a straight image of the existing C into

>>>the first 50GB of the new drive, will XP SP3 boot up ok?

>>

>> I have used Acronis True Image to "auto-magically" fill a new an

>> bigger drive from an image of a smaller drive. I've also done the

>> reverse, and shrunk a too-big C-drive to a more reasonable size. (I

>> don't keep lots of data on my C-Drive.)

>

> At the time I cloned my laptop drive, the free evaluation version of the

> Acronis product current at the time was fully functional, and I was able

> to clone the drive and use all of the tool's features without actually

> buying anything. I wouldn't be surprised if that was still the case.

>

> I've since bought copies of Acronis True Image for all of my home PCs

> and use it for daily backups.

>



Western Digital and Seagate offers a free version of Acronis True Image

with limited features, mainly it won't allow incremental backups and you

must have one of their branded hard drive to install it (it can be

external).



Those versions work very well to clone hard drives and resize partition in

the process and you can use them later to create "disk images" on external

drive for backup purpose.
 
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