silent running

Just bought a bigger hard drive and all I need to do is transfer my current Win XP setup directly over to my new drive, then reformat my old drive and use it as for data storage. I hear a lot about these transfer/imaging utilities e.g. Ghost, but I can't see why I shouldn't simply copy the whole lot across from one drive to the other in the usual way. In the old days I would have just gone into DOS and simply done COPY *.* from one to the other.

Obviously I'll need to make sure all the system and hidden files go over, but am I missing something here? Is there any trick to it? Does the 'Files and Settings transfer wizard' actually work, considering that I don't tend to run your usual Microsoft/Norton suite of programs?

mike1210

the files and setting will take ......files and settings no more, when our place rolled out xp to the desktop PC's many people used this to set up peoples accounts (we also ghosted an image to be sure)

many progs copy hard drives just stumbled on this one

http://www.webmasterfree.com/software/2173.html

diskcopy 4, acronis, partition magic etc etc

jpor

iTrader: (1)

Yep but DOS ain't a multiuser O/S like XP. What you have to be aware of is things such as files that wouldn't get picked up because they are in a locked status due to being used by the O/S. It's better to reboot with a good old Ghost disk and do a disc to disc transfer, that way the boot strap and all the files are copied. Besides do you really want to be confirming if you want to copy a certain read only file etc... Also worth mentioning that you can pick up free utils off Maxtor and Western Digital which will help you do things like that. That's if you bought a Western Digital or Maxtor disc.

ru'

Check the new disk's manufacturer's website; most of them have some free utility which will do exactly what you want...

ru'

Rubbish - I should've read this before posting!

silent running

Many thanks! Got a shareware of Acronis and it was spot on, did exactly the job I needed. I have now got two Maxtor drives and I've still not been to their website to check out their utilities!