Transfering EVERYTHING to new HDD

There are several ways to do this. You might begin by checking the docs and/or website for the 250GB drive, as many vendors nowadays provide tools for this. Otherwise you can use third-party tools like Acronis True Image or Symantec Norton Ghost. It is important to study the documentation with care to learn about things like master/slave jumpers.

I must admit, however, I've got one box that's been running for over a year with one disk drive configured as "Slave" on the primary IDE channel as its boot drive -- this ain't how it's supposed to be set up, but since the thing seems to be working just fine anyways, I've been too lazy to open it up and configure it correctly.

First, Look for Norton Ghost 2003 on the internet. NOT Ghost 9, or 10, but 2003. You will also need Knoppix if you have any information on the 250 you want to keep. IF the 250 is empty, boot the comp off the ghost cd. cd %cdrom%:\support (look and see what drive letter it assigns to your cd). now type ghost.exe. Choose from disk to disk options fomr the menue. Let it do its thing. Turn computer off. Move 250 to master. Reboot. You may have to go in and format the rest of the 250, as it may not stretch the 40gb disk image to fit. IF the 250 is not empty, you will need to use qtparted, on knoppix to make a partition for the 40GB image. Partition magic will work better, but is not free. Boot off ghost cd, change to %cdrom%:\support. Ghost.exe. Then choose from disk, to partition. e-mail me if you need clarification. Tiny place to put a lot of information.

If both drives are the same type either IDE or SATA all you need do is clone the drive with one of the above listed options and that will be all that is required.

However if the 40 GIG is an IDE and the 250 GIG is a SATA drive you [b]Can Not[/b] clone the drive and have it Bootable as the SATA drivers [b]Will Not[/b] be installed so that the OS can see the 250 GIG drive to boot from.

If that is the case you'll need to reload the 250 GIG drive with the original Windows Program and install all the necessary drivers as well as most likely installing the SATA Driver before you install Windows.

If you currently have anything on the 250 GIG drive you'll need to save it if you are using a Clone Utility as it will wipe everything that is currently on that drive and replace it with the contents of the 40 Gig Drive expanded out to fill the new drive. If you need to install from scratch I would still suggest saving everything on the drive as something could go wrong during the install and lose your contents but this is just a safety measure as you should be able to load Windows onto the Bigger Drive without loosing your existing data though you will of course need to remove the 40 GIG drive from the procedure or you'll end up with a Dual Boot Option which you'll have trouble removing and if you do remove the 40 GIG HDD then you'll get an error report if you chose the wrong option when you try to boot the system from the Dual Boot Option. If you need to install the Software completely it would be best to move the 40 GIG HDD to a USB Caddy so you can access it when necessary but have it totally removed from the system so you don't get any install errors when starting the system or reloading it.

Now XP does recognise some SATA Controllers so it would be worthwhile trying to clone the drive first and then disconnect the 40 GIG drive and try booting.