Replacing Internal Hard Drive?

jay clarke · 02-25-2007, 03:36 PM

Hi there

I have a Dell Dimension 8300, and the short of it is, I have 2 Hard Disks, 1 80 GB and 1 110GB taking up the two bays. I want to swap the original one of them for a much bigger faster drive, how do I go about this without losing vital programs like windows and stuff, would it be possible if done this way...

Copy the entire 68 GBs of the first one only an external drive then swap the old harddisk for a new better one, then move everything back from the external onto the new drive, keeping the same drive letter and everything? or is it harder?

Cheers

blackduck30 · 02-25-2007, 11:52 PM

Ok first of all make sure you buy a drive that is compatable with your system be it a SATA drive or a IDE drive

How i would go about it would be to disconnect your second drive and install the new drive, enable it and formatt it in either disk managment or a third party management tool such as partition magic 8 or a free program like Parition logic ( LOOK HERE )

Once you have the drive showing up in "my computer" I would then use a clonning program such as XXCLONE to copy the contents of your old drive over to the new one, make sure you have a read of this great tutorial that will help you ensure the clone drive is bootable LOOK HERE

once you have done that i would then disconnect the old drive and then reconnect the drive you want to keep out of the 2 old ones, be it the first one you disconnect or not, boot into the bios and then make sure the new drive is second in the boot order after your CD/DVD rom, save and exit then your set

JohnthePilot · 02-26-2007, 01:05 AM

Blakduck is correct. You can't just copy files over as the system files aren't copied. For a further description of using XXClone and how to make this new drive your main drive, look at " How to copy your operating system from one hard drive to another"

02-25-2007, 03:36 PM	#1 (permalink)
jay clarke Registered User Join Date: Feb 2007 Posts: 1 OS: XP	Replacing Internal Hard Drive? Hi there I have a Dell Dimension 8300, and the short of it is, I have 2 Hard Disks, 1 80 GB and 1 110GB taking up the two bays. I want to swap the original one of them for a much bigger faster drive, how do I go about this without losing vital programs like windows and stuff, would it be possible if done this way... Copy the entire 68 GBs of the first one only an external drive then swap the old harddisk for a new better one, then move everything back from the external onto the new drive, keeping the same drive letter and everything? or is it harder? Cheers

02-25-2007, 11:52 PM	#2 (permalink)
blackduck30 Registered User Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Wollongong/Australia Posts: 4,230 OS: XP pro SP3/Vista Ultimate My System	Ok first of all make sure you buy a drive that is compatable with your system be it a SATA drive or a IDE drive How i would go about it would be to disconnect your second drive and install the new drive, enable it and formatt it in either disk managment or a third party management tool such as partition magic 8 or a free program like Parition logic ( LOOK HERE ) Once you have the drive showing up in "my computer" I would then use a clonning program such as XXCLONE to copy the contents of your old drive over to the new one, make sure you have a read of this great tutorial that will help you ensure the clone drive is bootable LOOK HERE once you have done that i would then disconnect the old drive and then reconnect the drive you want to keep out of the 2 old ones, be it the first one you disconnect or not, boot into the bios and then make sure the new drive is second in the boot order after your CD/DVD rom, save and exit then your set __________________ Blackduck30 Time is like money and milk, It's always running out Any Donations Help Keep TSF Free For All Last edited by blackduck30; 02-25-2007 at 11:54 PM.

02-26-2007, 01:05 AM	#3 (permalink)
JohnthePilot Manager, TSF Articles Join Date: Mar 2006 Location: Cheltenham, near Wales. Posts: 30,099 OS: XP Home SP3, PCLinux, Vista Home Premium SP1 My System Blog Entries: 1	Blakduck is correct. You can't just copy files over as the system files aren't copied. For a further description of using XXClone and how to make this new drive your main drive, look at " How to copy your operating system from one hard drive to another" __________________ Submit New Articles Here If you feel that TSF has helped you please make a donationand help to keep the forum free Cenedl heb iaith, cenedl heb galon Folding@Home - Team 85015