How do you transfer everything from one hard drive to another.

  • Thread starter Tornado
  • 7 comments
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Tornado

Tornado

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First, some background: My Vista Ultimate install on the Lappy broke both of the Interstate games for some reason (they both should work, but they don't. And I'm not going to fight them). This is unacceptable. I want to dual boot Vista Ultimate and Media Center 2005 to solve the problem (as well as various other game annoyances), so I can use Media Center for various iffy programs; but my current hard drive is too small to do so. So I bought a 160 GB drive, and I want to transfer everything over from my old drive so I don't have to blow a weekend reinstalling everything. What is the best way to do so, and is it even possible?
 
If you have a suitable sized external hard drive, preferably with firewire, just copy the files onto it, swap the drives in your computer then copy them back across.
 
Err, this will only work for files and folders (music, videos, docs, etc).

If you are reinstalling the operating systems, programs cannot be copied across. They will have to be reinstalled.
 
TheCracker
If you have a suitable sized external hard drive, preferably with firewire, just copy the files onto it, swap the drives in your computer then copy them back across.
Click to expand...
Um, it’s going to take more work than that, isn’t it? When you swap in the new HD, you can’t boot from it, so you have to boot from the Windows CD, and either do a clean reinstall of the basics and then use the external to move over documents and settings, or somehow tell the Windows CD to do a full, bootable restore from the backup (which I have no idea if that’s possible with Windows).

[edit]: Treed.
 
Actually this is something I have also being wanting to do, is there really no way to totally clone a HDD, OS and all? so when you stick it back in your computer nothing at all has changed apart from the increase in GB...
 
DQuaN
Err, this will only work for files and folders (music, videos, docs, etc).

If you are reinstalling the operating systems, programs cannot be copied across. They will have to be reinstalled.
Click to expand...

Didn't realise he ment apps and OS too :dunce:
 
Make an image of the disk and transfer it? Its the same way big companies do it.


Ive never used anything to do so, but shouldn't be to hard to find
 

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