[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Move to a New Hard Drive here

[HeroofAvalon]

This really isn't much of a "guide", so much as telling people what programs you recommend for individual tasks. If you're going to post an actual guide, then it should at least be step-by-step instructions for those not in the geek profession.

Yet another disappointing article.

[rkinne01]

PCWorld, on 28 June 2010 - 06:46 AM, said:

Post your comments for Move to a New Hard Drive here

One thing to consider is that alot can go wrong in these transfers so make sure that you have a backup of the data on the original drive. I personally prefer to just do a fresh install of the operating systems (Ubuntu and Windows 7) to make sure any I get a fresh install. In some cases it maybe easier to freshly install all programs then import your data, making sure to get the newest version of each program.

[dandyg23]

There is another program which is reliable as well. It is called DriveImage XML. This program is really simple to use and it is free. It works both on 32 bit and 64 bit software of Windows.

[LiveBrianD]

Not that many people have x64 XP. Still only says some software - no real instructions.

[jtex1558]

Nearly every HD manufacturer has free software designed to format, partition, resize, and copy or clone old drives. In a retail package it is usually included. It is usually also downloadable from their site. Seagate's also includes utilities for deleting all data from the old drive.

[Northlite]

rkinne01, on 28 June 2010 - 10:30 AM, said:

PCWorld, on 28 June 2010 - 06:46 AM, said:

Post your comments for Move to a New Hard Drive here

One thing to consider is that alot can go wrong in these transfers so make sure that you have a backup of the data on the original drive. I personally prefer to just do a fresh install of the operating systems (Ubuntu and Windows 7) to make sure any I get a fresh install. In some cases it maybe easier to freshly install all programs then import your data, making sure to get the newest version of each program.

I agree with this strategy also. I find a new drive also means I find allot of programs etc that I haven't used and could do with out. I have a back up of my data/files and the freeware downloads I have collected so just load things back on as I need them.

[bisclavret]

How much was Lincoln's Ghost--er--I mean--Lincoln Spector--paid by EaseUS' developers, I wonder.

Just yesterday I used EaseUS Disk Copy Home Edition (Free) to copy my old hard drive ("C:\") to a new hard drive after installing the new drive as a second hard drive ("D:\"). My machine was running perfectly fine--no problems, a clean environment, excellent speed and response, everything working as it should. The problem was that I just needed a larger hard drive; so I decided to try to copy that perfectly working system over to a new drive instead of having to go through the time it would take to reinstall everything--plus it's hard to get SP1 for XP now. I decided to use EaseUS because it does a sector-by-sector exact copy of the original drive, or so the developers claimed. It sounded too good to be true--and you know the old adage about that.

Ultimately my experience confirmed the wisdom of that old adage. The copy went without a hitch. No read or write errors; EaseUS ran smoothly and in a reasonable amount of time; and I had an exact copy of my primary drive, OS and all on my new hard drive. All that was left to do was to unplug my old hard drive from the Primary Master position on the IDE cable, reset the jumper to make it the Master drive, check the BIOS to be sure it recognized and correctly established the new drive as the new Primary IDE Master, then boot it up.

Everything was going as smooth as silk--until time for the computer to read the boot sector and MBR. The cursor blinked and blinked, but no boot screen! Finally, I got the infamous "Disk boot error. Insert the system disk and press Enter" (or something to that effect).

I inserted the Windows XP installation disk and waited.

Finally the "Press any key to boot from CD..." message came on the screen, so I ignored it and allowed the system to boot from the CD just to see if it would boot up and if there was actually any data on the new disk. It booted up just fine using the CD, and I found that all my software and system files were in good working order. Once booted, it was the spittin' image of my original system. I put it through some paces just to test it out, and I was happy. Now if I could just get it to boot correctly without having to have the system disk in the CD drive, things would be perfect.

Thinking that the problem couldn't be that bad, I rebooted and allowed it to try to boot again from the hard drive's MBR. Still it would not boot without the CD, so I pressed Ctrl+Alt+Delete to restart the boot cycle and pressed a key when the "Press any key..." message appeared. I then pressed R to start the Recovery Console.

Once in the Recovery Console, I did the old "fixmbr" and "fixboot" commands to get a fresh MBR and boot sector established. I then let XP boot up with the CD and then did a reboot. It still would not boot without the system disk, so I went back into Recovery Console and did the standard "bootcfg /rebuild" to rewrite the boot.ini file, let it go to the screen giving me the option of which copy of Windows I should boot into (which led me to believe that the original MBR still existed but was misconfigured through a read or write error on EaseUS' part), then clicked on the option I had created in the Recovery Console. It booted up, and I checked the boot.ini (text and date modified) to be sure it had been rewritten. I then checked the boot path in "msconfig" to be sure that it was configured correctly. It checked out, so I removed the system CD from the CD drive and clicked Restart. Still I could not reboot without the system CD.

After a dozen or more reboot attempts trying different things, I decided to just put the original drive back into the machine and use the new one as a second hard drive; so I made the new drive the slave by moving the jumper shunt to the appropriate pins and kept the old one set as the master. Before connecting the new drive, though, I wanted to be sure that EaseUS had COPIED the data to the new disk and had not stripped the data from the original drive.

When I plugged in the original hard drive, it wouldn't boot; so I used the system disk to boot the hard drive. Except for having to boot from the CD, the system was exactly as it was before I used EaseUS.

Since I put the original hard drive back into the machine, I have tried and tried and searched and searched for a solution to the boot problem. So far, I have found no answers, so the only option left for me seems to be to do a clean install of XP and reinstall all of my software. It is going to be time consuming, because I have graphics, video, and audio creation, mixing and editing software in addition to office and printing software to redo.

Bottom line is, I had a horrible experience with EaseUS Disk Copy Home Edition, and I agree with rkinne01 when he wrote that he preferred to do a clean reinstall of the OS to be sure it was fresh. Although there is nothing wrong with the working order of my current XP installation aside from the reboot issue, I seem to have no choice.

I strongly recommend against using EaseUS Disk COpy Home Edition based on the experience I've just had.

Oh, and yes I was "told" by the EaseUS program as I began the copy process that the MBR would be copied to the new disk and was assured that all would be well provided I shut down and removed one of the hard drives before rebooting to ensure that there were no booting problems due to conflicts between the two drives. (Ironic, eh?)

Do yourselves a favor: Save time and do a fresh install! Most machines have system recovery or system restore partitions or disk sets to start you over with the basic operating system and device drivers, and most people keep their service pack files "just in case". Thank goodness I did - except for SP1, which is hard to come by these days since Microsoft is phasing out support for XP. For most people, then, reinstalling the operating system isn't a particularly hard operation to perform. Like anything, though, it takes time and patience.

[SteveStupple]

the software doesnt work, the freebee one is useless, yes it will do a mirror copy onto an identical drive, but thats your lot. if its a larger drive then no matter what you do it wont work.

i tried it on a windows 7 64-bit and does the copy etc, but had to use windows repair to sort it out and that failed big time.

I agree that this is more like an advert for the software rather than an articlle on how to do it, or even given any other software houses a chance to air there software. Not an article i would expect from a journalistic point of view.

[sparticus33]

I'm not sure what happened with everyone else here, but the software worked perfectly for me. I've always been one to do fresh installs, but for a lack of time I decided to try cloning.

I had a 250 GB Seagate Barracuda drive running Win 7 64-bit SP1 that I had run into the ground over the past 5 years (It's not been the system drive it's whole life; only been running the OS on it for a little over a year), and it was starting to fail; random bluescreens, very long boot times, etc. I picked up EASEUS, made me a bootable cd, and proceeded to clone the drive.

My replacement drive had not shown up yet at the time I cloned it, so I actually cloned my 250 GB Seagate to a 250 GB external herd drive I have lying around. Once I got the replacement, (500 GB Seagate Barracuda) I then cloned the image off of the external hard drive onto the 500 GB.

When the program was done (about 2.5 - 3 hrs to clone both times) I rebooted, unplugging my USB external hard drive so it would boot from the cloned 500 GB Drive. Not only did it boot up without any help, but it booted much much faster than the old dying drive had been (not due to the program I know, but it was nice to see a new HDD at work).

Once windows booted up, I extended the cloned 250GB partition to use the full capacity of the 500 GB drive, and the old 250 GB Seagate will be laid to rest.

Not only did it clone my drive successfully once, but twice. I hope someone else is willing to give this program a shot, because I loved it. It is very simple to use, got the job done well, and saved me many many hours that I did not have to devote to a full system reload.

Cheers!

[raymer]

Thanks for letting me know about EASEUS Disk Copy, just cloned my win7 to a new hard drive with no fuss in about 1 and half hours, great tool