new hard drive

[craigdeguz]

hey guys,

i just bought a new seagate Sata drive and should arrive in the mail this week. currently i have a western ide drive with windows xp home and other programs. how do i copy the entire drive to the seagate so i dont have to install windows again? i remember its like called identical copy of an image. how do i do that?

thanks

 

[Teknokid]

you will always have to install windows. but you can do an image shadow. so install windows, restore and it will be like norm. right click c, back-up, all info on this pc...

 

[craigdeguz]

im just not sure if i can install windows because i had to call them to install the copy i have. i got a message that the key i have has been used to much and the guy gave me a long number to install it again. im not sure if il get that again for the new drive.

 

[tuskenraider]

You don't have to do a reinstall. Go to the manufacturer's site of the drive your buying and download their utility program. It will have a disk copy feature to copy your old drive to the new exactly as it is, then you pick your new drive to boot from in the BIOS and reformat the old to use for data storage or whatever. You could also just use DriveImage XML as it has a copy feature as well.

 

[Teknokid]

i dont know if automated system recovery needs windows... it certainly needs the windows disk...