SOLVED - (How) Can I transfer OS from PATA to SATA?

[kcbaltz]

I've got a new AMD64 system (MSI K8T Neo) that's currently saddled with an old 2MB 20GB PATA hard drive. I'd like to replace it with a faster drive and everything seems to indicate the Hitachi Deskstars are the way to go. I figured SATA was probably a better choice than PATA, but I'm concerned that my plans won't work.

I was hoping to simply copy the contents of the old drive onto the new SATA drive and then use the SATA as the boot/system drive and the 20GB as extra storage. I'd like to avoid the hassle of reinstalling WinXP and all my programs if I can. Would it be sufficient to copy all the files, or do I need to do something special to mark the new drive as bootable? Is there free software for doing this?

Update
The new drive came today (80GB Hitachi Deskstar SATA) and I was able to image the old parallel IDE drive to the new one without a hitch. Just to be clear, what I wanted to end up with was the new drive exactly replacing the old one, but with more space. I may try to use the old one as a secondary drive later, but not right away.

Here's what I did (expanding on these Instructions)

1) Installed the SATA drivers for my Motherboard (K8T-NEO FSR) into Windows.

2) Burnt the latest Knoppix Linux-on-CD (3.4) to disc.

3) Rebooted with the CD in the drive. Gave it the "knoppix26 lang=us" start option. If you go with the default, you get the 2.4 Kernel and it won't support SATA.

4) Opened the root shell and unmounted the C: drive ' umount /mnt/hda1'. Double-checked that this worked by running 'mount' and verifying neither hda nor hdg (the device assigned to my Sata drive) appeared. BTW, I didn't expect it to be /hdg. I only noticed the name during the boot sequence.

5) From the root shell, I ran 'dd if=/dev/hda of=/dev/hdg'. That basically says, copy every byte from /dev/hda to /dev/hdg. This took about an hour to do 20GB. You can check on the process while it's running by doing a 'kill -SIGUSR1 <pid of the dd process>'. If you don't know Unix, don't worry about it. Just be patient. For reference, I was getting about a 9MB/s transfer rate.

6) At this point, the new drive is exactly like the old one, plus a bunch of unusable wasted space. To enlarge the 20GB partition to 80GB, I used QtParted (partition editor) which comes with Knoppix.

7) I disconnected the old IDE drive and then had to tell my BIOS to use the SATA drive at boot time.

That's it.

 

[Sonic587]

What models HDDs? I was able to copy my old 40gig WD's data onto a new 80gig WD SATA drive using a program from their site.

 

[imported_Hellbender]

It's certainly possible, you can use a disk imaging program like Ghost to do it.

But if you're moving to a new motherboard + other hardware, it's probably best that you just reinstall Windows.

-H

 

[SuPrEIVIE]

i want to ask a quick question w/out hte need of creating a new thread

i have a PATA WD80GB 8mb cache HD and would like to know if its better to have this as the boot drive and a large lets say SATA 160+GB 8mb cache HD to be a storage or vice versa?

 

[kcbaltz]

I'm not moving to the new motherboard etc. I'm already there with the slower drive. I elected to wait on purchasing the faster hard drive when I upgraded, figuring I could easily image and transfer to a faster drive.

 

[golgotha]

It can be done.
You can use Ghost to move your OS from one hard drive to another. Remember, when going from PATA to SATA you will need to install SATA drivers BEFORE you switch over because WinXP does not have native SATA support.
Also, you have to read the instructions carefully so you don't mess up your HD's boot record.

 

[tiap]

Go to the hdrive manufacturer's site and they should have a free prog you can download that will clone or migrate your existing os to the new drive.

 

[SuPrEIVIE]

Originally posted by: SuPrEIVIE
i want to ask a quick question w/out hte need of creating a new thread

i have a PATA WD80GB 8mb cache HD and would like to know if its better to have this as the boot drive and a large lets say SATA 160+GB 8mb cache HD to be a storage or vice versa?

sorry for using your thread Kcbaltz, but since i have a similar problem decided to just use the thread you already made can anyone help me from the quote or post above?

thanks in advance!

 

[kcbaltz]

You may have more luck getting responses if you start your own thread. They're free you know.

As far as my plan goes, I was unable to find software on any of the HD manufacturer sites, so either it comes in the box, or they don't have it anymore.

I've read that you can use the Linux 'dd' program to duplicate a disk. I'm going to use the Knoppix linux-on-CD distro to do this. I'll likely have to resize the partition when I'm done, but another program, parted, will supposedly handle that. Worst case, I figure I'll just reinstall everything :| .

 

[Dman877]

SATA drives are no faster then PATA drives...

 

[mrSHEiK124]

be sure to install SATA drivers to XP BEFORE you do any copying of any sort, otherwise you'll be left with a non-booting system

 

[kcbaltz]

Originally posted by: Dman877
SATA drives are no faster then PATA drives...

Then why the hype? I understand the underlying drive isn't faster, but I thought that communications were more efficient and thus the drive performed better using a SATA interface versus a PATA.

 

[imported_pak9rabid]

in it's current sate, SATA is really no faster than PATA. to the best of my knowledge, this is due to a limitation of the PCI bus, or maybe that was before they started putting them onboard. All the hype is the result of marketing. However, after the 2nd gen SATA stuff comes out, it will be much faster. I just want SATA for the nice small cables . thinking about getting some of PATA -> SATA adapters to get rid of the tape-worm cables. anyone had any experience with them?

 

[kcbaltz]

Bump for update to the original message