Swapping system Hard Drives

OK, you better go the clone route. Here are a few suggestions. the first link (Easeus/Todo) may do the trick. I have never used it myself because I have Norton Ghost (which unfortunately is not free). But Easeus has a good reputation. Sone of the others may do it too.
But in any case, if you want to clone to E, disconnect C whilst you are doing it. And if you want to keep the clone on E, you need a seperate partiton for it - but I am not 100% sure whether that works because I always go via an external disk. You may want to get one - they cost $50 to $80. Deals2buy: Storage Devices deals
And when you are all done, I suggest to make a seperate partition for your data. Here is a little video I made on how to do that. You best do the partitioning before you install the system. That way you have more freedom regarding sizing. Once you have the system installed, you may be limited with shrinking the new C.

PS: I just saw the previous poster also recommends a seperate data partition. And his way via Gparted may be good too if you don't mind doing the startup repair. I dread this, but that may be just me. LOL

Like I said before, I haven't got an installation disk, but thanks anyway.

Is there no utility that will just create an exact replica of the 80GB disk on the 500GB disk and allow me to boot from that?

Thanks for all the help guys, really appreciated!

whs said:

OK, you better go the clone route. Here are a few suggestions. the first link (Easeus/Todo) may do the trick. I have never used it myself because I have Norton Ghost (which unfortunately is not free). But Easeus has a good reputation. Sone of the others may do it too.
But in any case, if you want to clone to E, disconnect C whilst you are doing it. And if you want to keep the clone on E, you need a seperate partiton for it - but I am not 100% sure whether that works because I always go via an external disk. You may want to get one - they cost $50 to $80. Deals2buy: Storage Devices deals
And when you are all done, I suggest to make a seperate partition for your data. Here is a little video I made on how to do that. You best do the partitioning before you install the system. That way you have more freedom regarding sizing. Once you have the system installed, you may be limited with shrinking the new C.

I just said basically the same thing.. have you ever hear of gParted? It's a free partition editor that can be burned to a CD or installed on a flash drive as small as 256 MB with another free program called uNetBootin. The biggest advantage of gParted over the others besides the fact that it doesn't cost anything is that it loads up without mounting any HDDs and can create and edit partitions in over a dozen different file formats, it can clone partitions and it sets a flag to run whatever variation of chkdsk (depending on the OS the file system is based on) at the next startup. It can also read S.M.A.R.T. data. Try it sometime

Spoonology said:

Like I said before, I haven't got an installation disk, but thanks anyway.

Is there no utility that will just create an exact replica of the 80GB disk on the 500GB disk and allow me to boot from that?

Thanks for all the help guys, really appreciated!

See my earlier post with the links.

madtownidiot said:

whs said:

OK, you better go the clone route. Here are a few suggestions. the first link (Easeus/Todo) may do the trick. I have never used it myself because I have Norton Ghost (which unfortunately is not free). But Easeus has a good reputation. Sone of the others may do it too.
But in any case, if you want to clone to E, disconnect C whilst you are doing it. And if you want to keep the clone on E, you need a seperate partiton for it - but I am not 100% sure whether that works because I always go via an external disk. You may want to get one - they cost $50 to $80. Deals2buy: Storage Devices deals
And when you are all done, I suggest to make a seperate partition for your data. Here is a little video I made on how to do that. You best do the partitioning before you install the system. That way you have more freedom regarding sizing. Once you have the system installed, you may be limited with shrinking the new C.

I just said basically the same thing.. have you ever hear of gParted? It's a free partition editor that can be burned to a CD or installed on a flash drive as small as 256 MB with another free program called uNetBootin. The biggest advantage of gParted over the others besides the fact that it doesn't cost anything is that it loads up without mounting any HDDs and can create and edit partitions in over a dozen different file formats, it can clone partitions and it sets a flag to run whatever variation of chkdsk (depending on the OS the file system is based on) at the next startup. It can also read S.M.A.R.T. data. Try it sometime

Yeah, I know Gparted. It once messed up my whole system (was probably my fault). Since then I stay clear of it. But when properly used, it may be a good program to have.

Hey sorry, I hadn't noticed the thread had gone to a new page, and how do you mean "disconnect c while cloning to e"? surerly C needs to be plugged in so the program knows what files to copy?

Yes, you have to be careful with gParted. It will mess up your system if you use it to shrink a bootable operating system partition without first compacting it as much as possible. It used to have problems with NTFS, and that may have been your error too. I personally prefer it because it also works on Macs and Linux based machines and can be used to set up a HDD for multiple operating systems a lot faster than anything else I've tried.

This is a lot more complex than I assumed, I may just leave the 80gb as the system drive and have all my documents on the 80 drive.

Still, I will look at the cloning method, thanks guys.

Spoonology said:

Hey sorry, I hadn't noticed the thread had gone to a new page, and how do you mean "disconnect c while cloning to e"? surerly C needs to be plugged in so the program knows what files to copy?

I think you misunderstood. You first clone C to an external - or possibly a partition on E. (cloning is just copying your system and the MBR to somewhere). Then you disconnect C. Change the boot sequence in the BIOS and load the recovery CD (the documentation of the cloning program will explain how to do that). The recovery CD installs the clone on the designated partition on E (should be bigger or same size as the original C. If it is smaller, some cloning programs have problems).
By "cloning to E" I meant installing it from the clone image. So let me repeat:
1. you make a clone image to somewhere
2. you disconnect C
3. you install the clone image with the help of the recovery CD on E

Right I get you, sounds so simple now :).

How big does the recovery disk need to be?