Swapping my C-drive for something larger… ghost it?

[lifeguard23]

I’m running WinXP with 2 hard drives. My main drive is 40 Gigs which is where I have my OS installed. I have a 200GB drive as a D where I store everything including most installed programs. I want to switch out my 40GB for a 500GB, but I’d prefer not to have to format, reinstall the OS, reconfigure, etc. If I create a ghost of my current C-drive, can I simple ghost it onto the new 500 and have the system “work”? Or is this just wishful thinking? I’ve never really used Ghost before but it sounds pretty straight forward… or is there an easier way? Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

[s2k]

Check out Acronis http://www.acronis.com/
Better than Ghost IMHO.

[ephemera]

May try to install the new bigger HD as drive D and keep C as it is.

Then copy *.* all of the C: drive over to the D: drive.

Shut down your pc then swap the D for the C, turn on PC, if it works delete all of C:

Its only 40 gigs, shoulldn't take that long.

[Jin-n-Juice]

May try to install the new bigger HD as drive D and keep C as it is.

Then copy *.* all of the C: drive over to the D: drive.

Shut down your pc then swap the D for the C, turn on PC, if it works delete all of C:

Its only 40 gigs, shoulldn't take that long.

I THINK the copy will stop in the middle once it tries to copy the swap file or other files that Windows won't let you copy. Using a software like ghost is better IMO.

[Aske001]

Ghost and Acronis True Image both work fine for your purpose. Usually, that is - both can occasionally have a problem in a small percentage of cases. Fortunately in your case it's easy to just try it, plug in the new disk, see if everything is ok. Test carefully though - sometimes the problems caused by a system disk copy are subtle and don't show up immediately if you just do a few superficial tests. You don't want to discover an unrecoverable problem months down the road.

Seagate Disk Wizard is a free OEM version of Acronis True Image suporting basic backup/restore if you have a Seagate drive.

[hagbard]

Acronis True Image went screwy on me. Spent over an hour manually uninstalling and cleaning up the mess it left behind.

[Sash[DSL]]

Never had issues with Acronis. It allows you to copy the entire partition to another drive even if that partition contains windows that you are running as you are copying the files (your case). Also keep in mind, it's not only the files you have to copy but also MBR and boot record so that your computer boots off the new HDD.

[xwar]

Use Symantec BackupExec System Recovery 7, it's great ... it'll let you recover to different hardware too.

[audit13]

I just tried DriveImage XML on a bootable BartPE cd and it was excellent. I moved Vista to a larger drive.