[Stealth]

I've had this computer for years, set up just the way i want it, etc.  i probably have 150 programs on it, and i love everything about it EXCEPT for the space on the hard drive.  unfortunately it's running on a 120 GB hard drive, which was just about the biggest drive you could buy at the time, but i'm fast running out of space.  i'd like to basically copy everything to the new hard drive, but without having to install all the programs all over again.

if the only thing i'm replacing is the hard drive, and all the drivers, devices, etc. are going to stay the same, could i just ghost the hard drive to the LARGER hard drive?

how would i go about doing that?  new to this aspect of IT.

[Stormkeeper]

I'm not very sure on the process, but i do believe that you can turn your existing HD into an external HD, and once you get a new HD, you can just transfer the contents over to your new HD.

[CP5670]

I did this same thing recently by just copying all the files over. I first installed Windows on the new drive (thought it might set up boot sectors or something), but I don't know if that was really necessary.

[Shade]

http://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html

The free utility sounds like it should cover your needs:

This can be utilized to migrate an existing installation to a new hard disk as well as for data rescue

[Stormkeeper]

Yea, that was what i was thinking about, that cloning thing. I've just never done it before, only covered it in school.

[Tyrian]

Probably your bet bet would be that program mentioned above.  Get an external HDD enclosure, put the new drive in there, use that program to image your old drive to the new one, then swap in the new one for the old one.  That should do the trick. 

The only concern of mine is whether or not that imaging program mentioned above will image to an external USB drive.  It only says it works for IDE / SATA connections.

[Stealth]

that's not a problem; i'd just put the new hard drive in as an IDE slave.

just to clarify, for everyone who posted earlier:  i don't want to have to copy programs and files over; i want to be able to clone it, and then just boot from the new drive, and have it SEAMLESSLY boot up, with all my programs, files, settings, etc. as if it were still the old hard drive

[CP5670]

As I said, you can simply boot off the old drive and copy all the files over. I was trying to do the exact same thing recently and this worked for me, although it was with Win98.

[jr2]

Above method WILL NOT WORK FOR XP; I've tried that b4 and failed miserably!  (@#$@ Micro$oft!)

I do believe that GParted LiveCD has an option to copy a partition, and then afterwards enlarge it.  It's what I use... you'll just need to allow Windows to finish it's automatic chkdsk when booting to Windows after you fiddle with it in GParted.

[Polpolion]

Don't bother replacing it. Just get another HD and use that in addition to your current one.

[jr2]

... And then you can skewer thesizzler when your old one dies.   I'd switch them, and use the 120 Gig as an external.  Next time you upgrade, put the drive you're getting now in the enclosure instead of the 120...

[CP5670]

Above method WILL NOT WORK FOR XP; I've tried that b4 and failed miserably!  (@#$@ Micro$oft!)

What exactly happened? What I actually did was to install Windows on the new drive first (to set up the MBR/VBR properly) and then copy everything over, overwriting the new Windows files.

[jr2]

XP's files are always @#$!ing in use.  Even if you think you've got them all, you don't.  I suppose if you booted off of BartPE (UBCD) using a CD, then you might be able to do that.  Oh, and the MBR/VBR can be fixed in '98 by using fdisk /mbr from a DOS prompt from a floppy disk.

[Nuke]

just put a second drive in, mobos theese days have far more drive controllers than they actually use. pre sata boards only have 2 controllers but you can double them up so even older mobos you can rack up four ide drives. if you have sata controllers, then you can have even more. i have about 6 satas and 2 ide (2 drives each), so short of overloading the power supply i can have 10 drives. even boards primarily made for sata keep at least one ide controller.

i wouldnt go to extremes like ghosting or going external if i can get away just sticking another drive in the case. if youre old drive is so full you cant defrag it, then move your data files to the new drive. some games, like quake and unreal engine games can be moved without too much trouble.

also just use cable select for your jumper settings on all your drives. cable select is somewhat smart in that the drive which was configured first in the bios will get the master slot, the last drive to be auto-detected will become slave. all the hardware ive seen in the past 5 years let you pick a boot drive from the bios. now if you have one drive set to cable select and the other set to master/slave, then the cable select drive will take the unoccupied channel. this also gives you the option of using a different os on the second drive (i have my number 2 split into an ext3 for linux and a ntfs for my backup data).

[Polpolion]

... And then you can skewer thesizzler when your old one dies.   I'd switch them, and use the 120 Gig as an external.  Next time you upgrade, put the drive you're getting now in the enclosure instead of the 120...

Hard drives don't just randomly die. They would have to be in some way not taken care of, like jumping up and down right next to the computer, etc.

[jr2]

Hard drives don't just randomly die. They would have to be in some way not taken care of, like jumping up and down right next to the computer, etc.

Oh, really...?  So, I guess I must have been jumping on my computer then, eh?  As if that would even come close to the 250Gs of force that the hard disk is rated at.  (Yep, take a closer look at the text on your hard disk... mose are like 400 or more).  Symptoms started as an occasional unexplainable file error.  ScanDisk returns no results (on Thorough!).  Manufacturer recertification?  No probs.  Then one day... oopsie!  Your hard disk no longer functions.  Period.  End of line.  BIOS won't even recognize it.  You see, there is a controller board + memory on your hard disk as well, as I'm sure you are aware.  They can go bad, too.  Anyways... I just don't like broad statements such as "Hard drives don't just randomly die"... of course, there's always a reason.  No, I don't presume to know all that is involved with & currently affecting my hard disk.  So I'd just as soon play it safe!  There's a reason ppl make backup software / medium.

BTW, I"d back up your data, sizzler... you've jinxed yourself now.      Although I hope I'm wrong, for your sake.

[Bobboau]

I don't get why you are replaceing the hard drive, why don't you just add a new one?

[Nuke]

Hard drives don't just randomly die. They would have to be in some way not taken care of, like jumping up and down right next to the computer, etc.

Oh, really...?  So, I guess I must have been jumping on my computer then, eh?  As if that would even come close to the 250Gs of force that the hard disk is rated at.  (Yep, take a closer look at the text on your hard disk... mose are like 400 or more).  Symptoms started as an occasional unexplainable file error.  ScanDisk returns no results (on Thorough!).  Manufacturer recertification?  No probs.  Then one day... oopsie!  Your hard disk no longer functions.  Period.  End of line.  BIOS won't even recognize it.  You see, there is a controller board + memory on your hard disk as well, as I'm sure you are aware.  They can go bad, too.  Anyways... I just don't like broad statements such as "Hard drives don't just randomly die"... of course, there's always a reason.  No, I don't presume to know all that is involved with & currently affecting my hard disk.  So I'd just as soon play it safe!  There's a reason ppl make backup software / medium.

BTW, I"d back up your data, sizzler... you've jinxed yourself now.      Although I hope I'm wrong, for your sake.

if you enable smart drive monitoring in your bios, then it will tell you when your drives are about to fail, to give you time to backup your data. hard drives do suffer mechanical problems as they are machines. they operate at extremely high tolerances. the head floats just a couple microns above the disk surface. but no matter how well engineered they are, motors still burn out, metal still fatigues and they will break down. the electronics can fail to, but if uou handled the drive right when installing it, theyre failure rate should be nothing compaired to that of the mechanical components. and thats why they have bios level failure detection.

[jr2]

I always enable SMART monitoring.  I have yet to see a peep out of it, except for when using the util HDD Life, which used to be free...  *shrugs* I do believe the problem is that the Hard Disk is capable of reporting, as is the BIOS, but the OS has no instructions to take advantage of this capability.  Has anyone here seen a SMART error, other than while using a 3rd party application?  IDK; I'd be interested to find out more about this.

[Nuke]

as far as i know smart works from the bios. it wont report everything but it will test the drive electronics and check for any friction on drive spinup.