If your would like to copy both partitions over to the new 80 GB drive. What program do you need to look at for this? Ghost? Partition Magic? There may be a simpler way, but Ghost will certainly do it, is not expensive (in the USA at least), and is amazingly useful for doing things like full-image "standalone" backups. Go to the website of your 80 gig drive manufacturer. They will almost certainly have free software to download and do this. I have it for Maxtor, Western digital, Seagate, and several of the other drives I have had. If you don't mind spending a little money, I'd recommend checking out the tools from Acronis:
They make a competitor to Ghost that is a little cheaper and has a nicer interface (at least compared to the last time I used Ghost a year or two back) They also make a utility called "Migrate Easy" that can expand partitions proportionately to fill up a new drive...
I second MSHacks suggestion. I recently copied a western digital hard drive using a tool from western digital. Worked like a charm. Although, Ghost is nice for creating backups of your drive. So if you're on a tight budget, use the manufacturer tool for simple hard drive copies, but if you have the money, then a tool like Ghost may be worth the investment for the extra backup features.Here's a tried and tested backup and recovery policy for stand alone PC's.
Firstly have a separate data partition. On this partition you put my documents, and application data such as your email. So first you create the partition (in your case you simply partition your empty disk using Fdisk) and then you transfer all the documents and application data to it, changing the registry settings if necessary (though for my Documents a simple cut and paste will do the trick). You need to set your email program to store all it's data (.pst files for Outlook, and .dbx files for Outlook Express) in the appropriate folder in the application data folder on your new drive. Check that your Office templates are also kept there.
Now that drive you back up to CD/RW or DVD write or a network drive or a second hard drive (but make sure you have external storage if you do that because you don't want to lose everythng if somebody burgles your house and runs off with your PC). You can use whatever program you want for that but I would strongly recommend Second Copy from ww.centered.com
Now for the operating system partition (or partitions in that case) you make a cloned image. You can use Ghost for that or you can use Acronis (I have a free copy of Acronis that came with PC Plus). Do check out the version because earlier versions may not be compatible with the XP ( or "K?) NTFS file system (MS changes the specs for NTFS so you get the strange situation that the NT file system cannot be read in NT 3.51 or NT4.0 unless it has service pack 4 installed). When I am installing the OS I make a Ghost clone of the PARTITION as soon as I have the OS, a few small utilities, and all the registry tweaks including the new location for documents and data. This means that if I hose the installation installing programs later in the day I can get back to the earlier version quickly. I then install all the hefty stuff such as Office and Corel Draw and Visual Studio and then, when all is done, make another clone. If I have space I keep this on the same partition as the data, but still make copies to CD as well. Then I get brave and test it on the PARTITION.
Now this means that I don't need to piss around with the Recovery Console if something hoses my OS, as I can just restore the original software. It also means that my data is basically completely independent of the OS and its installation.
One caveat. I have a fairly stable system once I've spent a day or so installing everyting right. If you keep installing lots of different things, then you may consider having a RAID set up as well, so that you can quickly get back to the latest configuration. But I will defend my arrangement as the best for most users.
I've tried segregating the OS and the data in the past, and though it is extremely helpful when it comes time to move to a new machine and you're trying to back up all your data and hoping you don't forget anything, I've found that I seem to have a ton of trouble with "stubborn" programs that like to install common/shared files on the OS partition, no matter what you tell the installer to do. This is why I always try to budget a little more space for the OS partition than I think I need.
The two registry keys are H_KEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\ShellFolders and ...\UserShellfolders.
When you change the Personal folder path, all windows compliant programs will use that path for storing documents, or the subfolders my pictures and my music for those kind of files. You change the location of cookies and favorites using the same keys. Templates you change through Tools\Options in Word, and your email repository using the program, whether Outlook or Outlook Express.
Note that you are not changing the default place for installation of programs. All your programs are going to be installed on your OS partition which is why you make a Ghost clone after you have installed the programs. Now when you restore the Ghost clone of the OS partition you will not have installed any programs you installed after making the clone, but you will still save a load of time compared to reinstalling the OS and programs from scratch.
Note also that if you move to a machine with very different hardware the Ghost clone may not boot - my system is more of a quick restore - but you can use the utiiltiy that comes with XP for that.
I used the Western Dig tool and copied my drive, then rebooted w/ that drive. I got an error message saying that NTLoader was missing. Ok, so I copied a bunch of files from my C: drive over to the new drive (NTLDR, DOS.SYS, Boot.ini, etc) I changed the boot.ini on the new drive (80 GB) to look at the appropriate place when the new disk is the only one in there w/ one partition, and then my computer won't boot at all.
It says something like my drive is not ATAPI compatible and I get a blinking cursor forever. So now I've put my old drive back in, and I'm somewhat at a loss. Where do I go from here? What files need to be on the new drive to make it bootable?
