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Hard Drive Copy

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Is there a way to use xcopy to copy 1 hard drive (OS and all info) to another Hard drive? Both Drives are using NTFS. I have an old 5400 RPM 6 gig HD that I want to replace it with a 7200 RPM 20 gig HD. If I don't have to do an install of an OS and use the one that is already on the other drive that would be prefered. When I do this I would also need to know if the size of the original partitions would matter. The main OS is Win 2000.

21 replies

by silverfireiii

If you go to the manufacturer of one of the hard drives you can download software that will do it for you. This will make an exact copy of the 6 GB to the 20 GB. You have to have atleast one dive from the manufacturer you download the software from or the software won't let you. I always use seagate and their software works great. The only stipulation is that the new drive is larger than the old drive. Unfortunately though sin the old drive has partitions, you are probably going to have to partition the new drive and copy one partition at a time. Making sure ofcourse the new partitions are larger than the old ones.

by twuf

You shouldn't use Xcopy. You should purchase drive imaging software. It will make an exact duplicate of your drive and re-partition at the same time fitting the new drive size. Norton's Ghost or PCWiz makes imaging software for that purpose.

by mikev7874

I would use imaging software for this task. Usually Norton's Ghost I use, this will make an exact copy of the hard drive. No need to rebuild an OS, its just a duplicate. Very simple to use also..good luck

by tblack

No room in budget to purchase software like Nortan Ghost. This is a one time deal only.

by legj1

None of the free imagers support NTFS copying as of yet...believe me, I wanted to do the same thing a few weeks ago and couldn't find squat!

by tblack

That is why I was trying to do a xcopy routine. I have another computer that is up and running. I can place both of the hard drives on this computer and do an xcopy if I knew of a way that gets everything and works.

by mdelyea

If you have 3 hard drives you can use windows explorer to do the copy. Boot with an NTFS hard drive (not the one you want to copy or the one you want to copy to) set as primary master. Have the two other drives (the one you want to copy and the one you want to copy to) set up as master and slave on the secondary ide. Start explorer and make sure you have Show all files enabled in View, Options. Click on the drive you want to copy and then Edit and Select All. Then click Edit again and Copy. Click on the drive you want to copy to and then Edit and then Paste. This will copy everything, including the system files. You should be able to set the drive as primary master and boot it. I admit I haven't tried this with winnt/2k, but I have done it with win9x, before I got Ghost.

by mdelyea

I should have mentioned that the drive you want to copy to must already have a formatted partition on it to copy to.

by jereg

Sure. I use xcopy all the time. I haven't used it on W2K, but I don't know why it wouldn't work. As far as partitions, size doesn't matter with xcopy, as long as the new partiton is big enough to hold the data. First, partition and format the new drive, and make sure that the new drive is bootable. If you look at your system now, you would see something like c:, d: (old drive with data) and e:, f: (new drive, blank).
Drop out of windows into DOS mode.

xcopy c:*.* e: /s/e/h/y

This copies everything from c: to e:
/s=subdirectories
/e=empty subdirs
/h=hidden files
/y= overwrites files (you only have the system files, but this way it keeps going)
Repeat for d: to f:
type xcopy /? for all options
Ghost is great for making multiple images, but for one quick copy, I use xcopy. It's an old utility, but that's what it's for.
Good Luck.

by dan harmeson

I would use Norton Ghost, you dont need any programs installed on a computer, just use a disk that is bootable and has the ghost.exe on it. Then you can ghost one hard drive to the other Locally. This disk should be fairly simple to aquire on line. just search in a file swapping program for ghost.exe or something like that.

by briantruitt

Our company uses PowerQuest's Deploy Center which can either be used with their CD or copied to two floppies. It images whatever you have on one drive to another including multiple partitions and NTFS. It will also let you resize partitions beforethey get imaged into bigger partitions on the destination drive.

by cwunder3

I would suggest using Symantec Ghost to image the drive. You can use the evaluation version to make a disk to disk copy. When you re-image, you can change the size of the partitions. Of course you would lose any of the current data on the new HDD. It would be replaced by the image of your old drive.

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