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Basically I have a 300 GB IDE drive that is my boot device with Windows XP and all my programs on it on 2 different partitions. I leave my O/S on partition 1 and my programs and downloads on partition 2.
Now I got a new Seagate SATA drive that I hooked up and installed. It went through the whole process and I was hesitant when it asked if I wanted it to be a boot device and make the other drives secondary.
The truth is, I would love the SATA drive to be my boot drive, but I want it to be identical to what my IDE drive looks like now. However, they do not match in size. I have a 300 GB IDE and a 160 GB SATA. But, naturally, the IDE drive is not near full or even close to having 300 GB of data on it and both partitions would probably fit nicely on the 160 GB drive with room to spare.
Is there a way to copy the contents exactly as they are off my IDE drive to my SATA drive (like ghost copy or ghost drive or whatever that one program was for IDE drives)? I think there is a way, but the problem is that I have 2 partitions on the IDE drive and that I have my program files installed on the second partition, not on the same partition as the OS.
Does that make sense? I guess I could partition the SATA to have two partitions. One would equal the same size as the OS partition on my IDE drive. The other would just be whatever is leftover. I could just copy the contents of the 2nd partition off the IDE drive to the 2nd partition of the SATA drive. That is easy.
It's just how the programs I have but their own dll's, drivers, configurations, and misc files in the windows directory and the registry that make it so I can't just copy the 1st partition from one to the other and expect it to boot. I'd also have to copy the boot partition somehow too. You know? This is why I am confused here.
I do NOT want to reinstall windows from scratch and then download all those programs I have and reinstall them all and also reinstall all my games and applications from scratch. That is the hard way to do it. Is there an easier way or a program out there that would do an exact copy of the boot partition and OS partition of my IDE drive to my SATA drive and then make the SATA drive the master boot drive? SATA comes with something called DiscWizard, which can run in windows. That is how I set it up and formatted it and all. And when I originally did, I made it just one partition, since I wasn't sure if I could do all that I want to yet.
Any advice would be helpful and appreciated. I'm coming down with a cold and it's late and I am not thinking that clearly right now and could use some help.
Thanks!
~ dj purity
Basically I have a 300 GB IDE drive that is my boot device with Windows XP and all my programs on it on 2 different partitions. I leave my O/S on partition 1 and my programs and downloads on partition 2.
Now I got a new Seagate SATA drive that I hooked up and installed. It went through the whole process and I was hesitant when it asked if I wanted it to be a boot device and make the other drives secondary.
The truth is, I would love the SATA drive to be my boot drive, but I want it to be identical to what my IDE drive looks like now. However, they do not match in size. I have a 300 GB IDE and a 160 GB SATA. But, naturally, the IDE drive is not near full or even close to having 300 GB of data on it and both partitions would probably fit nicely on the 160 GB drive with room to spare.
Is there a way to copy the contents exactly as they are off my IDE drive to my SATA drive (like ghost copy or ghost drive or whatever that one program was for IDE drives)? I think there is a way, but the problem is that I have 2 partitions on the IDE drive and that I have my program files installed on the second partition, not on the same partition as the OS.
Does that make sense? I guess I could partition the SATA to have two partitions. One would equal the same size as the OS partition on my IDE drive. The other would just be whatever is leftover. I could just copy the contents of the 2nd partition off the IDE drive to the 2nd partition of the SATA drive. That is easy.
It's just how the programs I have but their own dll's, drivers, configurations, and misc files in the windows directory and the registry that make it so I can't just copy the 1st partition from one to the other and expect it to boot. I'd also have to copy the boot partition somehow too. You know? This is why I am confused here.
I do NOT want to reinstall windows from scratch and then download all those programs I have and reinstall them all and also reinstall all my games and applications from scratch. That is the hard way to do it. Is there an easier way or a program out there that would do an exact copy of the boot partition and OS partition of my IDE drive to my SATA drive and then make the SATA drive the master boot drive? SATA comes with something called DiscWizard, which can run in windows. That is how I set it up and formatted it and all. And when I originally did, I made it just one partition, since I wasn't sure if I could do all that I want to yet.
Any advice would be helpful and appreciated. I'm coming down with a cold and it's late and I am not thinking that clearly right now and could use some help.
Thanks!
~ dj purity
