0

I have a PC with Windows XP SP3. It has a 320GB hard drive. Disk Management shows 2 partitions:

  1. C:\, Windows XP, 74.52GB
  2. D:\, Files, 223.56GB

I need to transfer just the C:\ to a new hard drive I bought, a 1TB Seagate Barracuda (I haven't looked at it but I'm sure it's not yet partitioned). I've been doing research about this and I've decided to use EaseUS Todo Backup.

However, I'm not sure of the whole process that I have to do. I have these questions:

  1. How would I work this out with only 1 SATA cable?
  2. Will the MBR be fixed automatically with the new drive?

Additional notes:

  • I have an Ubuntu and a Parted Magic Live CD
  • I have a 500GB external hard disk, with 100GB free space.

I'm pretty knowledgeable about these tech stuff, but it's my first time cloning a disk and I need some guidance. Please help. Thank you.

UPDATE:

I went on and read more about this and realized that doing a backup and a clone are two different things. Good thing I did that before I cloned my hard disk to my external drive.

Anyway, I found out that I could use the SATA cable and SATA power cable that my DVD drive was using. So I ended up plugging both my hard drives in (had to convert my new drive from Dynamic to Basic disk), doing the Disk Clone from EaseUS Todo Backup.

I unplugged my older drive and used the new one and voila! Everything worked okay and the transition was smooth. I appreciate all the help. :)

d4ryl3
  • 413

2 Answers2

0

I recently got a small disk drive of 80 GB. My plan was to move my 500GB HDD Windows installation to smaller 80GB disk so that I can use this 500GB disk for other purpose with my MacBook. I followed the LifeHacker's steps and it worked.

To upgrade your hard drive without reinstalling everything, you'll need to use a utility to make an exact copy, or clone, from the old hard drive to the new one. Read on... LifeHacker

Chetan Gole
  • 101
0

The simplest and safest way to achieve your transfer I can think of (given you have only one sata cable) would be :

  • Have a Windows XP install disk, or burn one, or create a bootable USB stick with a Windows Xp install CD
  • Using your software, make a full backupof your system on your external drive
  • Change the hard drive of your computer
  • Perform an installation of Windows Xp on the new drive (you'll be able to partition it as you want at this step)
  • With your backup software, installed on your new Windows, restore your system from your external drive. (You might need to re-activate windows, but as no hardware except the drive have changed it should not be a problem.)

If anything goes wrong, you can still put back your old drive and have your old system back, and this way you don't need to worry about MBR and bootloader.

Levans
  • 2,200