Transferring complete XP install to new hdd

[Sheila Qwann]

Forgive me if this is more of a storage question, I couldn't decide if it was primarily that or primarily OS related, so I posted it here.

I have a dual boot, dual hdd pc. Newer drive 2 runs win2k, older drive 1 runs xp home. The older drive 1 is failing. I have bought a new hdd to replace it. Running under win2k/drive 2, I would like to simply COPY the entire contents of drive 1 temporarily onto drive 2, then remove drive 1, install its replacement, & transfer the contents I have stored temporarily on drive 2 onto this new replacement for drive 1. I am hoping on reboot the machine will simply act as it did with the old drive and I will have a functional OS with all applications etc (probably a pipe-dream, I know... ) . When I tried the 1st step of copying the contents of drive 1 to a holding folder on drive 2, WE refuses to copy the XP folder with the service pack libraries (spmsg.dll, etc), saying access denied/may be in use, even though that OS is not running. Skipping this folder, I try again, now it refuses to copy a number of temp internet files, saying the names are too long. Of course when WE encounters ONE file it cannot copy, it stops the whole process & you have no idea what it has & has not copied to that point (would be nice if it would just copy ALL it can, then give you a list of what it COULDN'T). I'm guessing this process will just be one stop after another of this type. So I'm wondering, 1) how can I copy every single file from the failing drive 1 to its replacement, ignoring any “access denieds” & similar "errors", just making a clone of the drive, and 2) after doing so and with the replacement containing this clone installed, is the pc likely to simple give me my dual boot option as before with a fully functional OS with all apps? I am hoping to avoid all those tedious re-install/re-config tasks around involved in replacing an OS.

Confusing, I know ;-(

Thanks,

Sheila

[PrntRhd]

What is the manufacturer of your new HDD?
Some of the manufacuters include utilities to help you migrate your data ont the new drive, a good thing.
There are also utilities out there that let you "image" a drive, so you can install the image onto the new drive and it becomes the old drive for all essential purposes. Ghost, DriveImage, Acronis TrueImage are all decent imaging programs. Also there is this one that was posted (Paul Komski?):
http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/imagew.html

[Sheila Qwann]

Thanks for the reply. Doing what you suggest was confused a bit because I can only have 2 hdd's at a time (or at least the cable has only 2 connectors; I considered trying to connect the 3rd new drive where the dvd burner or floppy was, but I wasn't sure this would work). Since boot.ini is on the GOOD drive, I could run it & the new drive, but I could not run the new drive & the failing one since the latter did not have boot.ini. SO I used partition magic to copy the contents of the failing drive onto a partition on the second existing drive (the good one w/boot.ini), then removed the failing drive & installed the new one. I had planned to bite the bullet & just reinstall everything, but I'm having a hard time xferring my firefox preferences to the new installation, a real pita mainly because of the calendar & stored passwords. The drives are all western digital, they do have the utility as you describe, I'm going to see now if I can get the copy of the old drive onto the new one & get the os therein to boot up.

Thanks again,

Sheila

[Paul Komski]

There are many approaches but the simplest would seem to be a direct disk to disk copy using Partition Magic, Drive Image, BootItNG, WD Utility, etc, etc.

Replace the Win2K drive with the new one. Clone a copy of WinXP disk to New dirve. Replace the Old WinXP with the new 'cloned' WinXP and then put the Win2K drive back as it was at the start.

[Sheila Qwann]

Thanks Paul, I ended up just reinstalling everything. In the long run, probably good to have a clean slate anyway...

Sheila