cloning and changing hard drive

[frenchyinpaddyl]

hello to all at thechspot..
Now I am sure some of you are more computer "nerds"than me but if one of has a good web site address for this problem..he/she will be my friend for life ..My hard drive has only 40 GB (a Dell Dimension 2300 from 2002 ) and I would like to change it for a better and BIGGER one
Now problem arise...I think that i do not Have a second bay for a second intenal hard drive so I need to find on how to clone my main hard drive .. take out the one in the PC ..install a bigger one and then re-installe verything on the new one and make it my main one (when turning on PC beeing reconize as the main C drive ) you see my problem and I have not found yet a goog web site which explian the Ato Z of the solution..(in plain english..)I am afraid about all that system BIOS and do not want to lose any of my data....of course I could Pay somebody to come to my home and do it ...but "impossible is not a FRENCH word "and I hate beeing defeated by a "machine"..I thaugh myself the art of computing ,installing second DVD-Writer.program that cannot install themselves etc.. but there it is a big step
ANY HELP WILL BE REALLY APPRICIATED
thanks to asll of you at thecspot
hope to hear from you soon

 

[Mictlantecuhtli]

I'd probably make an image of the hard disk drive with Acronis True Image - burn the image to multiple DVDs (I recommend True Image because I have it myself, but others like Norton's Ghost may have the same features as well).

Since the drive is only 40 GB, it would take less than ten DVDs to backup.

True Image can also create a bootable CD to recover the data back (would be required in this case).

So, after creating the backup, swap the bigger and better hdd there, set computer to boot from CD and restore the data.

After that there would be free space on the drive, so either resize the 40 GB partition or create new ones.

However, if you haven't bought the newer drive yet, make sure it uses the same connector as the old one (I guess it would be parallel ATA a.k.a. IDE).

 

[Ididmyc600]

Hi

I think you would be better taking it to a shop.

Regards