New Hard drive, transfer OS Question

[iode]

I got a new internal hard drive, WD Caviar Black, and it's faster than my WD Caviar Blue. I want to transfer my OS (Windows 7 Professional 64 bit) onto my new harddrive and reformat my old one. Can I do this?

Install new hard drive
Copy paste my entire old hard drive into my new one
Turn off computer
Switch their SATA ports on the motherboard
Enter BIOS and change default boot device to the new harddrive

Will that work? Thanks for your help!

 

[takenra]

To the best of my knowledge a straight cut and paste doesn't work. Best thing is to use the free Acronis true image software that you can get for free from WD (just go to their website and download it.

Install teh software on the old drive and run it. It will clone your drive onto the new one and you can adjust partition sizes etc

Once its finished, turn off computer, unplug the old drive and reboot
Your WD Black should have everyting the blue had

To avoid issues with the computer trying to boot from the old WD BLue just put it in a USB enclosure and format it that way. Then you can put it back into your computer and have a second internal hard drive.

Hope that helps

 

[iode]

Thanks for this info, is there any way that I can do the same thing that you mentioned without creating partitions on my new drive? Just a side note, they're different capacity hard drives. Thanks alot for your help.

 

[mouse29982]

get this torrent
http://www.mininova.org/tor/2910527

and use Norton Ghost 11.5
its mad old skool.. you can make what ever partition you want before you use ghost and it will not try to change it at all... i have a ghosting machine at work kicks ass !!!

 

[amnotanoobie]

Thanks for this info, is there any way that I can do the same thing that you mentioned without creating partitions on my new drive? Just a side note, they're different capacity hard drives. Thanks alot for your help.

Here's the thing, even with Acronis when I just replicated the exact size of the partition to the bigger drive, it refused to boot into XP.

500GB (2 x 250GB partition) -> 640GB (2x250GB partition with the rest as unpartitioned space). = FAIL

When I did the % partition, it did boot successfully.

500GB (2 x 250GB partition) -> 640GB (2x320GB). (Acronis autmoatically computed the proper space and partitioned based on the % on the old drive)

* Can't remember if this is because there are system files on the end of the drive that the boot loader reads, and since on the 1st case the end of the drive is empty, it didn't boot.


Oh, big note:

If you boot into your Caviar Blue, never connect the Caviar Black and let it be detected by the OS. If you allow this, then copy over with Acronis, then boot on the Black, the OS might get confused and allocate the old drive letters for the Black (i.e. F: G:, etc). You need to uninstall on the device manager the Caviar Black when you are on the Blue (then copy with Acronis).

 

[iode]

Ah, thanks for the headsup. It looks like installing my Caviar Black 640GB won't be an easy task after all. Do you think getting my OS and program files on it is worth the trouble over just leaving them on my Caviar Blue 320GB? I'm getting second thoughts here cus it seems like such a strenuous process, even with software dedicated to make it easier.

 

[amnotanoobie]

It is actually quite easy. (I have actually only used Acronis)

1. Make your bootable ghosting software.
2. Uninstall in the Device Manager the Caviar Black, upon asking for a reboot, pop-in the ghosting software then reboot (don't go back into Windows, it would install the drive again).
3. When you have booted onto Acronis, there is an option in one of the menus 'Disk Clone'.
4. You'd then be asked to select the source drive, then select the destination drive.
(Make sure that you selected the proper drive, because the destination drive would be formatted!). When asked how space would be distributed select 'Proportional'.
5. When it is finished copying, restart pc, go into BIOS, select the Black as the primary boot drive and use it.

You should notice that your original partition % size is the same with the one transferred to the Black.

 

[H@CK4EVER]

Question?

What if the drive I want to copy the files over to has a exsisting operating system.

In turn all i want to do is install another operating system on to a partition but use the exsisting operating system files instead.