Moving from one HD to another?

[detoam]

Hi there!
I have an 80Gig HD and I am getting 500Gig tomorrow. I have to move all the files, settings, etc over to the bigger drive. Can someone tell me how to do that?
I know of programs that create mirror images, but as I understand I have to recreate same size partition on the new drive for it work right. That would defeat the purpose. I am keeping the old drive as it is just in case. But the new one will not be partitioned. How can I move?

Thank you.
Regards.

 

[kimsland]

How can I move?

You mean copy, actually you mean "IMAGE"

From doing the "image" your drive should still be 500Gig Partition
But just in case there's 420Gig unpartitioned space, you could use Gparted

 

[detoam]

That's what I am trying to avoid. I don't want to create separate partitions.

 

[gbhall]

https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic112777.html post number 8 within, is by Kimsland, who gives you a whole list of imaging software, some free. To the best of my knowledge, ALL the above will resize an image to another size.

Why on earth you dont want to partition is beyond me. You just learned of the problems of moving 80G to 500, do you want to know the problems of moving 500Gb to 20Tb ?

How is it difficult to understand that you need to backup your data, or one day lose it all. How is it difficult to understand that backing up 400-500Gb takes a long time. Do you understand that any chore that takes the best part of 3 hours just never gets done? Backing up a very few smaller partitions takes much less time, and can be done according to a rotation scheme.

 

[detoam]

https://www.techspot.com/vb/topic112777.html post number 8 within, is by Kimsland, who gives you a whole list of imaging software, some free. To the best of my knowledge, ALL the above will resize an image to another size.

Why on earth you dont want to partition is beyond me. You just learned of the problems of moving 80G to 500, do you want to know the problems of moving 500Gb to 20Tb ?

How is it difficult to understand that you need to backup your data, or one day lose it all. How is it difficult to understand that backing up 400-500Gb takes a long time. Do you understand that any chore that takes the best part of 3 hours just never gets done? Backing up a very few smaller partitions takes much less time, and can be done according to a rotation scheme.

I never said that I do not back up my system. Please relax. And I have not complained about the time it takes.
The reason I need to be a one (500Gig) partition is because the amount of data on my computer accumulates daily. With the drive I have right now I am forced to remove some software in order to install something new. For example most new games are at least 5Gig+++ in size. I have just installed Crysis warhead and crysis wars both take more than 11Gig of space. I also will need to install FarCry 2 next month. Aside from multiple games I have an Adobe creative suit which I need for my hobby/work it itself takes a whole lot of space. And so on.
So this is why I want it all on one partition.
You did answer the question I could not phrase. That I can in fact resize the partition after moving the files. So thank You. I have gotten myself Acronis Migrate is and Partition magic. Hopefully it will do the trick.

 

[kimsland]

I use Partition magic from bootup disc (not from within Windows)
It can increase/decrease the partition size without hurting your data
Actually you still need to know what you're doing, else you could remove your Active OS (but really it is simple, I think anyway)

 

[detoam]

It is fairly simple. I moved win 98 one time. An increased the partition size. I did it from within windows though and had a ton of problems. It does make more sense to do it from the boot. I'll try it.

 

[kimsland]

My bootdisk loads mouse support too
A lot easier to grab and drag the bar, to increase the partition (even to increase the partition all the way to the end (making just one partition effectively)

Actually I use PM mainly to check Partitions for errors (boot up still !) which does not hurt the OS or filesystem (or data)

Note: always best to backup first (I sadly must say this all the time, just in case )

 

[gbhall]

I never said that I do not back up my system. Please relax. And I have not complained about the time it takes.

Sorry I came on a bit strong. I wanted to emphasise the essential task of backing up, and imaging (for recovery purposes) takes appreciable time. In my system, imaging 20Gb takes about 15 minutes with Acronis on high compression, so 500Gb might work out at up to 6 hours. Hence the major disadvantage of one single large partition. This long time is down to the write/verify speed of SATA which has not increased much even with the latest drives, and little more due to the processor time of compressing the image. Simply copying a 20Gb partition in the form of a compressed image 5Gb from one HDD to another takes about 5 minutes.

Many people find an attached USB drive a convenient backup media for images, which can be a little slower still. So separate partitions is always a better prospect, and so easy to set up. With a very little thought you can structure your data across partitions such that some are virtually permanant and only need backing up once.

You might take note that 'expert' users frequently use one relatively small partition for the O.S. and major utilities, but install all their games, music and other data on another but larger partition. I hope you don't need to experience it, before you truly believe the convenience of being able to restore just the OS without any need to restore the massive data component, in the event of a catastrophic event like unrecoverable O.S. infection.