Moving Hard Drive Contents

[marinerschas2]

Ok heres my complicated situation. I have 2 computers, i am planning to swap hard drives and give my main computer more overall space. heres the situation. Computers: My Computer (main) for short. and the Emachines.

Computer stats

main

Athlon 64 2800

1gb ram

80gb hd

30gb hd

emachines

sempron 3100

768 ram

100gb hd

I want to move the emachines 100gb hd into main computer. Then have the emachines run on the 30gb (computer is only used for internet).

with doing this i also want the 100gb hd clean formatted for main computer.

Question 1: can i transfer the entire contents of the 100gb drive (15 used) to a clean formatted 30gb without reinstalling windows? I have heard 1 person have success with this, and the other had to reinstall.

Then i want to fresh install xp pro on the 100gb on main computer, and use the 80gb as the 2nd hd.

Are these options possible? For further reference heres what i want the computers to look like.

Main

amd 2800

1gb ram

100gb hd

80gb hd

emachines

sempron 3100

768 ram

30gb hd (with exact copy of what was on the 100gb)

[shanenin]

you may be able to do that with the help of backup(cloning) software like acronis. I would look around on their forum for an answer.

http://www.wilderssecurity.com/forumdisplay.php?f=65

[rhema7]

I use This http://www.fssdev.com/products/casperxp/

Casper XP

[rhema7]

I have tried this also with great sucess and it is free.

DriveImager XP

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Back-U...vImagerXP.shtml

[Chappy]

First question, no, not having a bootable OS afterwards anyways. You can always transfer data but to transfer a bootable OS is another story completely. The Hardware layer is not the same so the system will not work by cloning one OS to another system.

Cloning works great for quickly backing up an OS and re-imaging it onto the boot partition to get a clean OS with settings again, but since the other system has different hardware completely, the OS will not know how to activate the new setup.

There is a very complicated way to edit the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) that I've heard "possibly" to work, but I doubt it and it's not easy.

Why not setup a fresh install on your emachine 30G drive, transfer what files and settings you want by slaving the 100G drive and using the Wizard, then move the 100G to the main and another fresh install.

[Besttechie]

I agree with what Dave (Chappy) said.

Most likely the easiest way is to set it up that way, transfer all your files to one drive (set it as the slave), format, copy them back. Which is what Dave was saying I believe. I would also agree on the point that since the hardware is different you have different drivers, etc. Which as mentioned could cause issues/conflicts on another machine with different hardware. Best bet is to start fresh but back up your data and then copy it back over.

B

[shanenin]

I agree, it would be easiest to just install clean, plus it will give the best result, but.....

If I am reading it correctly , the only piece of hardware that is changing is the harddrive. He wants to transfere the emachine install to a smaller harddrive, but still have it run the emahcine. The drivers will still match his emachine, so thier should not be a problem in that regard.

Without researching this, I think this would work

1. use a program like partition magic to resize your windows install on the emachine from a 100gb partition down to something smaller then 30gb.

2. use a backup program to make an image of both the mbr and OS partition

3. then use that same backup to pu the image back onto the 30gb drive.

[Chappy]

You're right shanenin, I misread what was going where I guess.

Still, less problems doing a clean install and transfer probably. It would work if he coned it also since the hardware isn't changing on the emachines OS, just the drive it's on.