Upgrading to new HDD without reinstalling?

[gsgleason]

Is it possible?

Lets say I have a crappy 40 gig generic HDD, and I want to replace it with a better 100 gig with an 8mb cache, how can I copy EVERYTHING (and I mean everything - every byte, even boot sector) to the new drive so I can just format the old one and give it to my friend and boot off the new one?

A guy at work recomended using the DOS xcopy tool, and I found some miscelaneous utilities online. any thoughts?

 

[Rick]

xcopy isn't going to work for you, ESPECIALLY if you are using Windows NT, 2000 or XP. xcopy can work with Windows 9x/Me, but you will have to take some extra steps to make your drive bootable.

The most reliable way to do this is using a disk imaging utility, such as Norton Ghost or PowerQuest Drive Image. There are probably some freeware utilities out there.. Infact, I know there is.. But I don't remember the names.

If I am not mistaken, I think xxcopy (freeware and NOT xcopy) offers disk imaging. Don't hold to me that one though.

 

[Nodsu]

/me mutters something about Linux..

There are many utilies that can copy partitions, with most of them you will have to recreate the boot sector by yourself, but that is no problem if you have just a single Windows installation.

 

[LNCPapa]

I know for sure it's easy to do with symantec ghost 7.5 - I do it on an almost daily basis.

Never tried resizing using Drive Image - I only use it for one drive.

 

[Phantasm66]

Drive Image or Norton Ghost would be just the ticket.

As some have commented, xcopy or copying through explorer would not work.

 

[Nic]

You can use DOS xcopy (I think), but then you'll also have to reinstall (upgrade) using your windows cd to make it work. Don't quote on that though, as I've never done it, but its worth a go if you can't find an image copy utility.