Copy OS from boot drive to another HD

[Adcadet]

I'm running WinXP on a IDE drive, but I'd like to put it on my SATA drive (Raptor 740). Is there an easy way to copy the entire boot drive onto the SATA drive so I can then boot off the SATA drive without Windows ever knowing that anything happened? If needed I can create an identical sized partition on the SATA drive as what the OS currently resides on (20 GB).

 

[ddrueding]

Which motherboard are you going to? If it's a newer board with native SATA ports you should be fine. If its an older board with the SATA ports as an add-on controller, you will have too many issues to be worthwhile.

 

[Adcadet]

MSI K8T Neo. Onboard SATA. The SATA is on the Via VT8237 chip

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_detail.php?UID=496

 

[P5-133XL]

There are multiple products like Ghost that will image the drive and restore it to another HD.

The first you may have will be if you need a add-on SATA card that needs drivers. the solution is to add the SATA card and its drivers to the current installation, before imaging so that Windows knows about it before it needs to be used.

The next, issue, you may come up against is that the boot.ini file may need to be editied so that Windows knows to boot off the SATA controller rather than the PATA controller. See:Modifying the Boot.ini as an example of this kind of frustration.

 

[Adcadet]

My windows installation currently has the SATA drivers installed, as I'm able to read and write to the SATA HD.

 

[ddrueding]

This motherboard does not have native SATA support. Drivers will be needed during the boot-up phase for the OS to boot properly. I'm not sure if these are the same drivers with the same config as ones in the OS that allow basic drive access. I also suspect that serious fooling with the boot.ini will be required.

I wouldn't bother...just do a fresh install.

 

[Adcadet]

Can I just boot off a Ghost (or whatever) CD, copy my current boot drive onto the SATA drive, then boot off the old HD and find boot.ini on the new drive and edit it until Windows will boot off the new HD?

 

[Bozo]

I believe Acronis will do a migration of this sort. Clone Disk

www.acronis.com

So will a copy of Drive Image.

Some hard drive manufactures have utilities to do this.

But I would recommend a clean install.

Bozo :joker: