how to do a drive copy without reinstalling windows?

[Lithium381]

I just got a new HD and i want to move all my old files from my old HD to the new one...i tried just copying it, but some file in windows could not be copied because of a file sharing issue, i don't get it, but it prevents me from doing that. Any way i can do this without doing a windows reinstall? since thats a pain?

mods - let this stay in here, i realize it'd probably be better in another forum, but this one moves faster

thanks

 

[Supradude]

if what you mean is to move your entire install from old disk to new, i'd go buy a copy of norton ghost, for the money the most sueful product for back up and hard disk moving... it will literally mirror your old drive to your new drive so you can boot the new and it will fire up like you never touched it at all...

 

[Frosty3799]

<< if what you mean is to move your entire install from old disk to new, i'd go buy a copy of norton ghost, for the money the most sueful product for back up and hard disk moving... it will literally mirror your old drive to your new drive so you can boot the new and it will fire up like you never touched it at all... >>



roger the norton ghost idea.. some motherboards even come with norton ghost on the drivere cd

 

[Lithium381]

yeah, i have norton ghost, thanks, i thought that was for backup, but hey, yay, i'll brb and let you know how it goes, thanks

 

[Linflas]

If you are using 95/98 (don't know if it works on Me) yes you can as long as you do the following:

Close any extra junk you have running in the system tray.
Select everything on the drive, then deselect the Windows directory.
Copy those files to the new drive.
Create a Windows directory on the new drive.
On the current drive open the Windows directory and select all files. With all the files selected scroll down and look for the swap file and deselect it (from memory it is something .swp but can't swear to that).
Copy all these files to your new Windows directory on the new drive.
Open a Dos window and sys the new drive. Be sure to use the complete syntax that includes both the target drive and the source drive.
After doing the required hardware changes with the hard drives boot with a diskette and use Fdisk to make the new drive active.

This is the way we used to do images back in the day before we had Ghost.