Hey, you guys and gals probably know... Solved!

[Treasa]

Hey, you guys and gals probably know... Solved!

I need a bigger hard drive, but this is the first computer I've owned with SATA instead of IDE. I'd like to ghost (mirror) this drive onto a larger one, so I still only have 1 drive and don't have to mess around with RAID. I don't think it's as simple as 'copy all' Anyone have the retartded chimpanzee instructions for this? I've looked at other places, but they all say I have to use RAID.

 

[GuyNwah]

Any tool that can copy whole partitions. I usually use gparted from a live CD: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php You can also use Parted Magic, which is a more complete kit and well maintained: http://partedmagic.com/doku.php

 

[tommy5761]

Actually you don`t have to run a RAID array even if you have more than one hard drive just install and plug in to your SATA port and let windows run as an additional hard drive .But if you only want 1 larger hard drive then there are a number of ghosting software available but you need to be careful as some don`t copy all files and folders . If you purchase a Seagate hard drive it usually comes with Seagate tools which will copy your boot drive to another hard drive then just unplug your old drive .
Some other software would be Acronis and Ghost from Symantec .
I`m sure others will chime in and maybe give some additional advice .

 

[Treasa]

Thanks Guy and Tommy.

I need instructions like:
1, plug in drive to secondary spot
2. run acronis or whatever
3. unplug primary drive

But I don't know if there are additional steps before, after, or in between. Also, I don't know if drives have power requirements or how you find out if your motherboard limits how big the hard drive can be. (it would be very sad to get a 2 tb hd and not be able to use it- not that I think I need one that large)

 

[GuyNwah]

Thanks Guy and Tommy.

I need instructions like:
1, plug in drive to secondary spot
2. run acronis or whatever
3. unplug primary drive

But I don't know if there are additional steps before, after, or in between. Also, I don't know if drives have power requirements or how you find out if your motherboard limits how big the hard drive can be. (it would be very sad to get a 2 tb hd and not be able to use it- not that I think I need one that large)

Drive power requirements are hardly ever troublesome. Common modern drives can be 5 watts idle to 8 watts full power. They draw more current when they spin up, but that almost never matters unless you are running servers with big disk farms.

Both the operating system and firmware on the motherboard limit drive capacity. Motherboards with old-style BIOS (unless you bought a new motherboard recently, this is what you have) can address 2TB only. Windows OS except for 64-bit Vista and Windows 7 can address 2TB only. So 2TB is your limit unless you have a recent motherboard and OS with explicit support for larger drives.

If you have Acronis:

Make a bootable disc using its "Create bootable media" feature.

Boot the disc you just made, and follow instructions until you get to "Clone basic disk". Select the source and target disks.

I prefer to not use the "proportional resizing" and "copy NT signature" features.

If you are a cheapskate like me:

Get Clonezilla Live: http://clonezilla.org/downloads.php (get an ISO file, so you can burn it direct to CD). Boot the CD you just burned.

Follow instructions at http://clonezilla.org/show-live-doc-content.php?topic=clonezilla-live/doc/03_Disk_to_disk_clone

(Skip the crap about copying Clonezilla to the target disk. Just boot the damn CD and click through to 'Choose "Start Clonezilla"'.)

When you're done, remove the old disk, and the system should boot from the new disk. You may need to run CHKDSK, and you will need to go into Disk Manager to resize your partition.

 

[Treasa]

Wonderful!

How do I mark this thread solved?

 

[tommy5761]

Wonderful!

How do I mark this thread solved?

Solved is only for Tech section questions . Or you can edit the topic title to include something like = Solved .

 

[Treasa]

oh pooh! there are questions in life that don't involve technical resolutions!

Thanks Tommy.