Author: Spot Posted on: 7/10/2000 Discuss: In the forums

Introduction Did you just go out and buy a larger hard drive because your's is out of space? Do you not know how to transfer your old data to your new drive? Sometimes, transferring the data can be easy but re-installing all of your software can be a pain in the arse, especially if you can't find your drivers. Sometimes it's nice to reload your home machine because you get a fresh load and get to start all over, not having residue of programs you uninstalled months ago. But what if you have the "perfect" system and you don't want to reload your whole machine, just because you got a bigger, faster hard drive? I'll show you how to use one of the tools that will duplicate your drive and get you up and running in no time at all. Why Would You Do This? Let's say you currently own a 4 Gb 5400 RPM drive that's running low on space and you went out and got yourself a nice 10.2 Gb 7200 RPM drive. Now I've seen people take that nice new 33.3% faster transfer rate drive and install it as a secondary slave drive, but the OS is still running on that slow 5400 RPM drive. Or they re-install Windows on the larger drive, hook up the smaller drive as slave and copy their data back over. There is a much easier way. The Steps First off, grab yourself a floppy and create a startup boot disk. If you don't know how to do this, go to MS-Dos and type in: Format A: /S Next, go out to this place and get yourself a copy of Norton Ghost 6.0. This is only a 15-day trial period, but I do recommend purchasing this software. You will use it again. The installation will give you plenty of options and different programs to install. I personally "unchecked" every box during the install so only the "Ghost" program was installed. Once installed, you can copy "ghost.exe" onto your boot floppy you just created. It's only 661k so it will fit. (Yeah - I know, a 13Mb + download for a 661k file.) The file by default will be found here: C:Program FilesNorton Ghost 6.0Ghost.exe. So now that you have your boot disk, shut down your PC and install the new second drive. Install the destination drive and the source drive on the same IDE cable. Check your jumper settings on the drive to ensure one is set to Master and the other as Slave. (If you are not sure how to do this, check with the documentation that was packaged with your drives for the proper jumper settings). Technically you should put these drives in their proper place in the case. Don't follow my example in this picture, I'm just too lazy to screw everything in. From here, you can boot your machine and enter the Bios to make sure both drives are being detected. Once both drives are recognized by the system, insert the boot disk you created (with Ghost.exe on it also) and boot your machine off of the floppy. Once completed, at the Dos A:> Prompt, type: Ghost.exe Once Ghost has been launched, you will have to click OK a few times. From here, you want to goto "Local", then "Disk", then "To Disk". What this means is...you will be cloning one hard drive (disk) to another hard drive (disk) locally (on this machine - not over a network). The next screen you will see is asking you which disk is the "Source" drive. Pay special attention to which drive you select. This is the disk you want copied, the one with the data that will be transferred. If you select the empty new drive as the source, then duplicate it to your data-filled drive, you will LOSE ALL OF YOUR DATA on your original drive. The second column will help you determine which one to select. This column shows the drive size in Megabytes, so if you know you want to copy a 4 Gb hard drive to a 10 Gb hard drive, just read this column and it will display the info for you. Next, you will be prompted to pick the destination drive. This is simply the drive that you want to have the data copied to. If you are upgrading to a larger drive, select the larger drive (in Mb) from the list. Once you click OK, you will be prompted to begin. In the lower half of the screen, you will see the details of what is about to occur. You will see a list of the sizes of the source and destination drives. Take one last good look at this to verify you are copying the data in the right direction. Once you are sure that you have selected the proper source and destination, click on "Yes" to proceed. Now all you have to do is sit back and wait. Depending on how much data is being transferred, the speed of your drives and processor, this duplication can take as little as 5 minutes, or as long as an hour and a half. Once completed, you will have to shut your PC off, set your jumpers properly on your hard drives so you can boot off of the new drive and now you have an exact copy of your original operating system on a larger drive with plenty of room to spare. Other Uses You don't only have to do this to upgrade your system. Norton Ghost 6.0 is a wonderful backup utility also. I use it once in a while when I decide to backup my entire system. Then if anything goes wrong, I can just reload my hard drive with my last backup and I'm right back to where I was. With a spare drive and just an hour, you can be back to a completely functional OS. This is why I stated earlier in the article that you will use it again. Norton Ghost is also a wonderful utility in the workplace if you are a technician. If you just received 15 or 20 new PC's in stock and they are identical, just make one standard load, then duplicate the drive to the other drives, and viola! - you have 15 identical machines!

Copyright © by LWD All Rights Reserved.

Published on: 2004-02-22 (41078 reads)