I am in the process of replacing my old c: drive with a new hard drive. I partitioned the new hard drive using WD data lifeguard tools. I set up enough space for the first partition to be able to handle the entire old c: drive. The WD data lifeguard tools asked me if I wanted to make the new drive a boot drive. At first I said yes and when the program was done partitioning the drive, it copied the files from my old c: drive to the new hard drive. Well that would have been great, but for some reason the new hard drive thought I had Windows 98 and not Windows XP and thus would go straight to the command prompt upon boot up. The second time I told data lifeguard utilities to just create the drive as a data drive and it partitioned it. My questions are, even thought I didn't make the new drive a boot drive, will I still be able to use a program such as Norton Ghost or Acronis True Image to copy my old c: drive to the new hard drive's first partition? Also, how does this image thing work exactly? I know I can create an image of my old c: drive, but that creates one file. Do I then take that one file and restore it onto the new hard drive? And finally, will the Windows XP security licensing affect this transfer at all? TIA.

I use Partition Magic for that and it copies the partition directly onto an empty unpartitioned drive. As long as the copy also become the primary partition it should be active and exactly the same as the original partition. BTW: Never copy the OS partition out of the running OS because some files can't be copied and the copy can't work! Partition Magic reboots from a special batch file that copies on a lower running level before rebooting when the copy is done. The same problem maybe with running programs on other partitions! As you run XP I guess you're using the NTFS filesystem. Are your software versions able to work with NTFS ??? If not that can't work because they can't read the data in the correct way!

Partition Magic 7.0 or higher will work with XP. Just copy the file Ghost.exe to a floppy. This is how I would do it. Slave the old HDD to the new HDD then boot up to the command prompt. Insert the floppy with Ghost.exe on it and Navigate to the root of C:> by typeing CD: and hit enter, then navigate to the A:> and type ghost.exe and hit enter. That will launch the batchfile that will guide you through the rest of the process. When done. You should not be able to tell a difference between the Old C: and the New C:. It will be an exact mirror image of the old drive and it will boot just like as if you installed all the stuff manually. As far as the XP security issue. It shouldn't be one. As it does look to Hardware changes, Just changeing the HDD shouldn't give you a problem. It has to see three or more Hardware changes before it thinks it's in a different computer, thus prompting you to re-activate windows.

Just follow the instructions in Acronis True Image. Works perfectly, just remove the old "C" drive when you boot to the new "C" drive. You must do the above copy using the five floppy disks since you can't lock the old "C" drive in windows.

The "copy to" drive needs to be RAW which means NO Partitions if you are doing any kind of Ghost or drive image. Remove all partitions on the "copy to" drive. You do not need to setup the drive if ghosting. The ghost image has the boot information in it which is imaged to the new drive.