Upgrade my Hard Drive without an XP re-install?

JR · Post by JR » Tue Dec 21, 2004 12:38 pm

I want to swap my current main 80G HD with a new 200G one. Is there any way to copy my current windows install onto the new drive without having to re-install everything? Thanks.

Boudreaux · Post by **Boudreaux** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 1:33 pm

Don't most hard drives these days come with software that allows you to copy a complete disk image from an old disk to the new one? It's all automated, you just tell it which disk to copy from and which one the new one is, and it does a complete disk copy. Voila.

JR · Post by JR » Tue Dec 21, 2004 1:43 pm

Does it really? Mine didn't come with any software. It's an oem Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 HD (ST3200822A) . I guess I should go check out the Seagate support site.

CeeKay · Post by **CeeKay** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 3:31 pm

OEM versions come with the bare minimum, usually just the drive and some screws- no cables or anything. As you already guessed their website would be your best bet.

Creepy_Smell · Post by **Creepy_Smell** » Tue Dec 21, 2004 6:13 pm

I just bought a 200GB Seagate and it come with a cd that had a way to copy the old drive.

The program was discwizard - http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/dri ... scwiz.html

To use, you install the program on your old HD. Then run it while you have your new HD set up as a slave. It lets you set up the partitions and copy the old HD. It was a lot better program than the one from my old WD HD.

JR · Post by JR » Thu Dec 23, 2004 11:53 am

Thanks for the info all, I used discwizard and it seemed to work fine except...

My drive letters have changed. I previously had two physical HD's in the machine, each with 2 partitions. The primary HD was C: and E:, and the slave was D: and F:. Now the primary is C: and F:, and the slave is D: and E:. Kind of F'd up because some of the games I had on my old Drive F: are not working properly. Freaking steam now wants me to re download Half-Life2!

So, is there any way do re-letter my Hard-Drive's back to the original configuration?

Thanks.

Freezer-TPF- · Post by **Freezer-TPF-** » Thu Dec 23, 2004 12:02 pm

Are you running XP? If so, you should be able to change drive letters using the Disk Management tool. It's buried in there, so just go to Help and search for Disk Management. After you get to it, you should be able right click on your other drives and switch the letters around. (Note that you may have to temporarily change some drives to higher letters to avoid having duplicate drives while you are rearranging them.)

CeeKay · Post by **CeeKay** » Thu Dec 23, 2004 5:07 pm

Freezer-TPF- wrote:Are you running XP? If so, you should be able to change drive letters using the Disk Management tool. It's buried in there, so just go to Help and search for Disk Management. After you get to it, you should be able right click on your other drives and switch the letters around. (Note that you may have to temporarily change some drives to higher letters to avoid having duplicate drives while you are rearranging them.)

Good to know. I just put in a new HD which is now the master but it's listed as F and the slave as C. There haven't been any problems so far (I even reinstalled most of the newer games onto the new HD because it's faster).

JR · Post by JR » Sat Dec 25, 2004 12:55 pm

Freezer-TPF- wrote:Are you running XP? If so, you should be able to change drive letters using the Disk Management tool. It's buried in there, so just go to Help and search for Disk Management. After you get to it, you should be able right click on your other drives and switch the letters around. (Note that you may have to temporarily change some drives to higher letters to avoid having duplicate drives while you are rearranging them.)

Thanks Freezer, it worked like a charm.

Freezer-TPF- · Post by **Freezer-TPF-** » Sun Dec 26, 2004 12:40 am

Cool. The ability to re-letter and rearrange your drives like that is a nice little feature of XP.