cloning system hard drive

I know there's a post with various answers with some of these questions
answered, but I'm not sure all questions have been answered.
And, No, I can't afford a "professional," all they ever seem to do is
reformat, reload.
I need to install a larger primary drive but want to keep my WinXP OS and
many, many programs with their patches and upgrades intact. In effect, I
want to completely clone my present boot drive to another, larger boot
drive.
What software is best? Ghost, Aconis, or XXCopy? and what versions? I
want the easiest and the best, not necessarily the cheapest.
What process should I use? Can I install the new drive as primary (in place
of the present boot drive), format it accordingly (ntfs? can I do that
without XP in place?) then use a cloning program to transfer everything from
current primary to secondary while keeping or transferring the boot sector?
Upon initiation of the new boot drive, will XP require reregistration?
(Bear in mind that I will still have my old boot drive available in case of
problems.)


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Relevant Pages

  • Re: cloning system hard drive
    ... I need to install a larger primary drive but want to keep my WinXP OS and many, many programs with their patches and upgrades intact. ... In effect, I want to completely clone my present boot drive to another, larger boot drive. ... then use a cloning program to transfer everything from current primary to secondary while keeping or transferring the boot sector? ... Both Ghost and Acronis True Image work well. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.general)
  • Re: Transferring Windows OS from IDE to SCSI
    ... > try booting the clone on the SCSI drive, ... > drive and it will detect the install and ask if you want to ... I've got an old version of Ghost 2000 IIRC. ...
    (comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage)
  • Re: Hard Drive Upgrade using Maxblast
    ... drive to store the image you create (IDE, ... Install Ghost on a workstation and create a set of Ghost boot floppies. ... > research into this issue before I run off and clone the drive. ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.server.sbs)
  • Re: My successful hard drive cloning
    ... I do basically the same thing with Ghost - works great! ... >I use Ghost clone option and clone the master to the ... >When I install new software, ... >backup to master disk copy with Ghost. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsxp.basics)
  • Re: Mighty Mouse Prefs?
    ... I must change out _soon_) that have accumulated since my last clone was made ... I originally said restore from your clone, ... But now you're recommending and Erase & Install, ...
    (comp.sys.mac.system)