(Re)Installing Win XP Prof on a new HDD ...

PoBoy

PoBoy

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Help a Win XP newbie : If a user has Win XP Prof already installed on a hdd and he purchases a new hdd, what's the best/easiest way to install Win XP on the new drive ? I mean is there any way to avoid having to reinstall the os + drivers + win updates + apps ? Can the old Win partition be cloned on to the new hdd ?
 
PoBoy said:
Help a Win XP newbie : If a user has Win XP Prof already installed on a hdd and he purchases a new hdd, what's the best/easiest way to install Win XP on the new drive ? I mean is there any way to avoid having to reinstall the os + drivers + win updates + apps ? Can the old Win partition be cloned on to the new hdd ?
Click to expand...

You can use Ghost or Acronis True Image to clone the HDDs .... I think some of the HDD manufacturers also have a drive cloning software available on their sites.

I do this often as I have a few HDDs and I change the OS HDD using True Image to make a clone of the previous XP setup.

Making a clone of the full drive is never a problem but if you make a mirror of one partition to a partition on another HDD then XP does not seem to like that and at times will not start - I have found a solution to this problem in case you run into it.
 
Well.. easy said it all.... Cloning is all that you need to know and the next time you Thank Easy.. rep him too.. :P
 
If only the partition with win xp prof needs to be cloned on the new hdd, how would I go about it ? And, I don't have a CD/DVD writer. Would a program like xxcopy work ? Once I can boot win xp from the new hdd I won't be using the old hdd.

Thanks.
 
^ AFAIK Its not just the visible files that make up a HDD. There's the boot sector as well. Only a clone image copies all this data as well.
 
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