Switching to a New Hard Drive

[drfsupercenter]

Hi,

Previously I had a 200GB IDE hard drive as my main boot drive. I made a 30GB partition for Windows, and the rest was for storage.
Well, I realized I couldn't keep enough free space on that 30GB partition, so I bought a new drive. That one is a 500GB IDE.

Well, the problem is... I don't want to have to reinstall Windows and all my stuff. But I also heard you can't just copy and paste the files, because the drive needs to be formatted when installing so the boot sectors get written.

So I made a 60GB system partition, a 10GB Linux partition (so I can dual-boot now), and the rest for storage.
Then I installed Windows XP on the 60GB partition.

So then I installed Ubuntu to the 10GB partition (and obviously formatted it to EXT3.) I plugged the old hard drive back in as a slave, so that it could see both. I copied all the files from the Windows partition to the new 60GB partition. Since I think "System Volume Information" and boot.ini are tied to the hard drive, I did not overwrite those.

Well, the problem is this: With just the 500GB hard drive plugged in, Windows won't boot. It shows a Windows XP splash screen (with a much smaller logo size than normal) and sits there indefinitely. Is there something major I'm overlooking?

As I also tried EASEUS Disk Copy, and just copied the entire drive to the new one. That worked. But copying just the partition didn't seem to.

[Abuilder]

DRF
you made to much work for yourself. If either drive old/new are a WD or Seagate you can download Seagate tools or Data Lifeguard for the WD and either tool has the option to clone a drive in full. If you have a WD you could have installed the Lifeguard software on your old drive and then hooked up your new drive as a slave and used lifeguard to setup the partitions on the new drive and after that clone your C: to ?: on the new drive. Then hook the new drive as Primary Master and it should boot right up. With all your software intact.
Make sure to close as many things as possible while the clone is being done. IE Firewall,AntiV and such

[drfsupercenter]

The old one is Maxtor and the new one is Hitachi.

So I don't think that's really an option

What I don't get, though, is this. I used EASEUS's free tool to clone my entire drive. Well naturally there was a ton of unused space since my new drive is bigger. But it wouldn't let me resize or even move the partitions. I could create new ones and alter them as much as I wanted, but the old ones wouldn't budge.

I have a hunch something is broken in my Maxtor drive - because it's been running really slowly and sometimes makes noises. The files are all readable though.

[atifsh]

I don't want to have to reinstall Windows and all my stuff. But I also heard you can't just copy and paste the files, because the drive needs to be formatted when installing so the boot sectors get written.

programs like partition magic / acronis disk director can copy partition from one drive to another, thus u will have booting partition.

second option that iv tried many times is making image using true image and restore thast on another drive 100% works on same system. sometimes wont work on different system [yes iv tried that too]

[Abuilder]

If you are upgrading and want to migrate your data from the old drive to the new drive we provide MaxBlast as an option.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/maxtor_desktop/

[MilesAhead]

You might try Paragon Drive Backup Express. They claim you can restore into partitions of a different size as long as there is enough room to hold the stuff that was backup up.

http://www.paragon-software.com/home/db-express/features.html

[MilesAhead]

edit: sorry for double post. I got the famous whirling Vista circle.

[doctorhardware]

Saw a 500gig sata Hitachi for $49.99. I am thinking about picking up another drive at that price it is almost a steal.

[copyless]

I always use Acronis True Image, it gives you every option you could need, and works with every OS I have ever tried it with, even Vista 64. It will make an exact clone of your disc relative to the size of the new one or you can choose the size of each partition. Then you can remove the old drive and keep it as a back up or reformat it and use it as another drive. For the price, when I bought it, it was the best program of its type available, of course that's been a few years back, but it was about half the price of others at that time.

[drfsupercenter]

programs like partition magic / acronis disk director can copy partition from one drive to another, thus u will have booting partition.

second option that iv tried many times is making image using true image and restore thast on another drive 100% works on same system. sometimes wont work on different system [yes iv tried that too]

The thing I need though, is for it to be able to do that AND make a partition double the size.

If you are upgrading and want to migrate your data from the old drive to the new drive we provide MaxBlast as an option.
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/sup...axtor_desktop/

Interesting, not sure how it stands up to all the commercial programs though. I tend to not like drive-locked programs like that because say I want to upgrade from the Hitachi to another Hitachi, I'd be screwed.

You might try Paragon Drive Backup Express. They claim you can restore into partitions of a different size as long as there is enough room to hold the stuff that was backup up.

I tried that for resizing the partition, but I can try using it to simply copy the 30GB partition to a 60GB partition. That would probably ask me to reformat it though, which is OK as long as it doesn't screw up my Ubuntu.

Saw a 500gig sata Hitachi for $49.99. I am thinking about picking up another drive at that price it is almost a steal.

Mine was somewhere in the vicinity of $65 on eBay. It's ironic, IDE used to be so much cheaper than SATA, I didn't switch since SATA cost more for everything. Now they're only really making SATAs (except for smaller drives around 160GB and such)... and IDE costs a ton more since it's harder to find. Next computer I get I'll get a SATA controller instead.

I always use Acronis True Image, it gives you every option you could need, and works with every OS I have ever tried it with, even Vista 64. It will make an exact clone of your disc relative to the size of the new one or you can choose the size of each partition. Then you can remove the old drive and keep it as a back up or reformat it and use it as another drive. For the price, when I bought it, it was the best program of its type available, of course that's been a few years back, but it was about half the price of others at that time.

I have heard about that program before as well... can it do what I am describing easily enough? Basically, I have a 30GB booting Windows partition I want to back up, but want to change to 60GB and keep it bootable. These "copy entire partition" softwares I've tried up til now only let you do that *if you keep them the same size*. And I've already determined that doing that and then trying to resize in Partition Magic doesn't work.

[ipaulo]

I'm just thinking out loud here. What if you keep you OS on the old drive and maybe give it a bigger partition for windows. Then use your new 500gb for storage. Put everything you want to keep on that drive in case windows takes a dump. Basically keep your OS and programs on the smaller drive. Use the bigger drive for all the things you want to keep. Just as an extra insurance.

[Abuilder]

Interesting, not sure how it stands up to all the commercial programs though. I tend to not like drive-locked programs like that because say I want to upgrade from the Hitachi to another Hitachi, I'd be screwed.

You’ll be screwed when your system crashes and you don’t have a working backup at all due to foolish procrastination.

[doctorhardware]

That is why I have several external drive for my laptop and other computers.

[drfsupercenter]

well, there's two problems with just making the Windows partition bigger.

1. I already have a ton of internal drives as it is, I'm trying to consolidate them, not add more. I'm planning to get another 500GB internal and combine my 160 and 200GB ones next. And I have like 3 external drives as well - I just don't want to end up having more hard drives than I can store.
2. That 200GB hard drive is old, and running incredibly slowly now. I don't know what the problem is, but I know there's something wrong with it. When I put it in my external USB enclosure, it wouldn't even start spinning... when I had it as a secondary drive, Windows wouldn't see it. I don't know what's wrong with it, and really don't care, once I can get the new drive running I'll just destroy the old one.

[atifsh]

The thing I need though, is for it to be able to do that AND make a partition double the size.

I have heard about that program before as well... can it do what I am describing easily enough? Basically, I have a 30GB booting Windows partition I want to back up, but want to change to 60GB and keep it bootable. These "copy entire partition" softwares I've tried up til now only let you do that *if you keep them the same size*. And I've already determined that doing that and then trying to resize in Partition Magic doesn't work.

one answer true image. what u have to do is to make partitions of ur liking, make the first one as active primary partition, left rest as unpartitioned

duplicate the partition on new drive, then make the other partition and install ubuntu again.


or if u already have ubuntu installed just copy the drive as is, and later re partition using disk director / partition magic.