Need Some Hard Drive Advice

mjwidd · 04-11-2009, 08:16 AM

I have a Dell Dimension 4700, It came Pre-loaded with XP-Home.
Currently has a WD Caviar SE 80 Gig HD. I'm looking to upgrade to a Larger drive. {1} Is there any benefit to bigger is better, ex: 250/500/750???????

I'm looking at a Western Digital Caviar SE16 3.5" 500GB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive WD5000AAKS, 7200 RPM, 16MB Cache

{2} I have NO O/S cd. How will I transfer my data, Info, etc from one to the other. As I beleive the new Drive will be blank. Am I correct on this?

Any Help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank's Mike

**raptor_pa** · 04-11-2009, 08:21 AM

If Dell didn't ship recovery cds there should be an option to burn recovery disks from teh recovery partition on the factory drive. You can use something like driveimagexml to make a clone of the disk, you will need to use a partition angement program to expand the partition to use the full disk after the clone since the clone makes an exact image of the original drive.. right down to size.

mjwidd · 04-11-2009, 08:35 AM

I have limited experience with this sort of stuff. I'm wondering if I should just get another copy of XP. from NewEgg or something?

What is the overall complexity of this procedure?

**grimx133** · 04-11-2009, 09:21 AM

If you use the drive to drive copy function in DriveImage XML it doesn't take long at all, and very easy to do. It's pretty much select source and target. You install DriveImage on the old working drive. Install the new drive. Old is source, new is target. When it's done you shut down and replace the old with the new. It should boot up without problems. If there are any probs, you can put the old drive back in a go from there. I tried it a couple months ago, From the time I started up DriveImage until I successfully booted from the new drive was 25 minutes. However, I leaned down the old drive to about 5 or 7 gigs first. More data means more time.

04-11-2009, 08:16 AM	#1 (permalink)
mjwidd Registered User Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Dirty Jersey Posts: 15 OS: XP-Pro SP2	Need Some Hard Drive Advice I have a Dell Dimension 4700, It came Pre-loaded with XP-Home. Currently has a WD Caviar SE 80 Gig HD. I'm looking to upgrade to a Larger drive. {1} Is there any benefit to bigger is better, ex: 250/500/750??????? I'm looking at a Western Digital Caviar SE16 3.5" 500GB SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive WD5000AAKS, 7200 RPM, 16MB Cache {2} I have NO O/S cd. How will I transfer my data, Info, etc from one to the other. As I beleive the new Drive will be blank. Am I correct on this? Any Help would be greatly appreciated. Thank's Mike

04-11-2009, 08:21 AM	#2 (permalink)
raptor_pa Mod Hardware Team Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Central PA Posts: 4,931 OS: XP	Re: Need Some Hard Drive Advice If Dell didn't ship recovery cds there should be an option to burn recovery disks from teh recovery partition on the factory drive. You can use something like driveimagexml to make a clone of the disk, you will need to use a partition angement program to expand the partition to use the full disk after the clone since the clone makes an exact image of the original drive.. right down to size. __________________

04-11-2009, 08:35 AM	#3 (permalink)
mjwidd Registered User Join Date: Feb 2008 Location: Dirty Jersey Posts: 15 OS: XP-Pro SP2	Re: Need Some Hard Drive Advice I have limited experience with this sort of stuff. I'm wondering if I should just get another copy of XP. from NewEgg or something? What is the overall complexity of this procedure?

04-11-2009, 09:21 AM	#4 (permalink)
grimx133 Mentor Hardware Team Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Canada eh Posts: 3,165 OS: xp mce sp2, xp pro sp2, windows 7 beta My System	Re: Need Some Hard Drive Advice If you use the drive to drive copy function in DriveImage XML it doesn't take long at all, and very easy to do. It's pretty much select source and target. You install DriveImage on the old working drive. Install the new drive. Old is source, new is target. When it's done you shut down and replace the old with the new. It should boot up without problems. If there are any probs, you can put the old drive back in a go from there. I tried it a couple months ago, From the time I started up DriveImage until I successfully booted from the new drive was 25 minutes. However, I leaned down the old drive to about 5 or 7 gigs first. More data means more time. __________________