what's the best way to copy an old hard drive to a new hard drive?

[Kaido]

One of the disks at work is pretty close to dying. It's a 6 gig on a win98 machine. I'm going to try to scrounge up another hard drive for the system; what's the best way to mirror the data over to the new drive? Any particular software that you've used that has worked well?

 

[CalvinHobbes]

Norton Ghost will work.

 

[NiKeFiDO]

any free tools? I would also like to know
If its 6 gb you could also use DVDs and just backup the data needed - however getting a dvd burner ETC to that machine could be a hassle/expense.

 

[Kaido]

Originally posted by: CalvinHobbes
Norton Ghost will work.

Yeah, but that requires a burner or an external hard drive, which this computer doesn't have. Isn't there some kind of PC-to-PC copy program somewhere?

 

[JimPhelpsMI]

Hi, Most or all HD manufacturers have free programs to CLONE one drive to another. A plain Copy wont work as it wont get all the stuff you need. Maxtor calls theirs MAXBLAST. Some of the Maxblast versions work only on Maxtor, but most work on any drive. It will partition and format a drive in a few seconds, but as it is intended for brand new drives it does not test the entire drive, so you would need to run Scandisk or equivalent to check for bad sectors/clusters. It also has what they call "Copy an entire partition etc." That is really a CLONE. Be careful to work on the correct drive. Luck, Jim

 

[teddyv]

I've always liked CopyCommander - works like a charm.

 

[Old Man River]

I wish I could follow what ya all are saying.
On my right, I have a new build to do. It will have a Seagate drive.
On my left I have my old Dell Dimension 4100 Series with a
Pentium 3 processor at 1 Ghz. It has all my files on a 60 GB Ultra ATA Hard Drive.

I buy whatever software product Seagate has, or what ever darn drive Dell used?
And then what do I do? Do I want the hassle to pitch the Dell hard drive into my new build?

I don?t think I will ever get to the point where I will ever know half of what you all know.

Sigh! I have all my documents saved to CDs, perhaps I needent worry about this.

My new system all packed and ready to unpack and build is a:

ANTEC ?SONATA? Black Case with True 380W PS,
AMD Athlon XP 2700+ ?Thoroughbred? 2.17GHz 333MHz FSB Processor
ASUS "A7N8X-X" nForce2 400 Chipset Motherboard Socket A
CORSAIR ValueSelect 512MB (2 x 256MB) 184-Pin DDR SDRAM
Corsair Value Select 184 Pin 512MB DDR 400 PC-3200
Seagate 80GB 7200RPM IDE Hard Drive
ASUS nVIDIA GeForce FX5200 Video Card, 128MB DDR, 64-bit

I have another system I am getting ready to buy and build:

Antec Solution SLK3000-B Black Steel ATX Mid Tower
Antec NeoHE 430 ATX12V 430W Power Supply ? Retail
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ ?Venice? 2.2GHz 1GHz FSB 939 Processor ASRock 939Dual-SATA2 Socket 939 ULi M1695 ATX AMD Motherboard CORSAIR ValueSelect 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM System Memory
XFX Geforce FX5200 PV-T34K-NT Video Card ? Retail - $44.00
Seagate Barracuda 120GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive
Zonet ZFM5620-LT 56Kbps PCI Bus (Plug and Play) Modem
LITE-ON Black Combo Drive

 

[laurenlex]

I AM NOT a computer genius, but I did this: Just build the new computer. Once it is up and running, install the hard drive from the old computer as a slave or storage drive. Then just drag the files from F over to C. It's easy.

 

[MageXX9]

Originally posted by: laurenlex
I AM NOT a computer genius, but I did this: Just build the new computer. Once it is up and running, install the hard drive from the old computer as a slave or storage drive. Then just drag the files from F over to C. It's easy.

Probably the easiest route.

 

[CalvinHobbes]

Originally posted by: Kaido

Originally posted by: CalvinHobbes
Norton Ghost will work.

Yeah, but that requires a burner or an external hard drive, which this computer doesn't have. Isn't there some kind of PC-to-PC copy program somewhere?

Although I've never tried it, the version of Ghost I have (8.2) has a Disk to Disk option.

 

[redhatlinux]

Google is probably your best friend. Try searches for disk copy, backup etc. Many of the new harddrives will have some kind of software that can be used to copy the contents of the bad drive to the new drive. Maxblast is probably one of the simplest to use. IIRC it boots from a floppy, has a semi grapical interface which allows for partioning and formatting the new drive and then making a copy of the old. BTW many of the purchase products have a limited free trial. As previously posted, set up the new drive, lets sau as master, (if you have two controllers on the mb) set the other as master on the second controller, fire up the software and go. The new drive will be bootable and you can then trash the old one. Pretty sure that IBM drives had a similar utility, not sure if Hitachi stills has the same one. Don't sweat the thing, its really simple.

 

[Fern]

Originally posted by: Kaido
One of the disks at work is pretty close to dying. It's a 6 gig on a win98 machine. I'm going to try to scrounge up another hard drive for the system; what's the best way to mirror the data over to the new drive? Any particular software that you've used that has worked well?

I use the Clone feature in Norton Ghost. It gives me a perfect duplicate, with the OS, drivers and data all there. After running Clone, just unplgg the old HDD and put the new one in it's place and you're goog to go.

Might check the sticky in the software section for any free apps that will clone.

Fern

 

[CrispyFried]

HDClone is free and should do what you want.

personally I use Ghost, been using it forever it seems.

 

[Kaido]

Sweet, I didn't know Ghost could do disk clones. We ended up ordering a basic Dell box as a replacement; I'll bring in my external USB hdd reader to grab data off it tomorrow.

As far as using Ghost to create a system recovery disc, I wrote on a tutorial on how to do it, located here:

http://www.wiredbynature.org/projects/gateway/software/ghost/index.html

Enjoy and thanks for the input.

 

[hausdave]

Personally I use Knoppix. Free and once you have done it once it is quite easy. There is a book called Knoppix hacks which includes full version of knoppix and tells you step by step how to clone a HDD.

 

[alimoalem]

when i was making my first build on nov/dec or 2003, the Seagate hard drives came with this hard drive copying software. i don't know the name of the software or anything. what u do is u have both drives plugged in and boot off the cd (i think) and then you fil transfer. EVERYTHING gets copied to the new drive and it saves all registry, documents, other files. it's as if it was your old drive, but not

 

[CHOPPER GOD]

Depends if you needs to transfer your operating system over or just files. Use ghost or maxblast if you need to copy windows over to new disk.

I prefer a clean install if your getting a new computer. Just click and drag stuff from old drive as needed if that is the case

 

[Basie]

If it's a Win98 system I have used XCopy in the past. Worked great. At the command prompt just type:
xcopy C:\*.* X:\/s/e/h/c/k/r. Go to C:\ and delete the swap file first so you don't copy it over. I tried it on
WinXP but it never booted up.

 

[tiap]

Originally posted by: CHOPPER GOD
Depends if you needs to transfer your operating system over or just files. Use ghost or maxblast if you need to copy windows over to new disk.

I prefer a clean install if your getting a new computer. Just click and drag stuff from old drive as needed if that is the case

That is the correct answer.

 

[ezland00]

Hello,
i just setup a new computer to replace my old 450mhz 30gb system. how can i copy whole drive to the new hard drive without losing any data?? i try to connect the old hardrive to the new system, but it didn't work.