How would I move the contents of my entire internal hard drive to my new external hard drive?
I just bought a new 298gb external hard drive and i was thnking of moving my entire onboard hard drive (74.53gb capacity with 27.49gb free space left) on to my external drive, so I was wondering is it a good idea, how would I do it would i need to leave anything on my internal drive, and would it cause any problems? Any help would be apreaciated
What I want to know: is it a good idea how i would do it do i need anything left on the internal drive will it cause problems
Drive type: 320 gb Seagate Free Agent Go Ultra-Portable Drive
What I want to know: is it a good idea how i would do it do i need anything left on the internal drive will it cause problems
Drive type: 320 gb Seagate Free Agent Go Ultra-Portable Drive
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Jul 14, 2010. 10:24 AMconradev
says:
If your a somewhat advanced computer user, and are familiar with UNIX, you can build GNU ddrescue and run it off of a bootable USB drive to copy the contents of one hard drive to another, including the MBR. I just saved my dying 1.5TB HDD with ddrescue, by getting all the data off to the new drive. As for whether you should proceed or not, if you need the HDD space and have sufficient computer skills, you will not come across any issues.
Why do you want to do this?
Scrub it and start again?
"cause problems" would be an OS issue if it was at all.
L
Jul 7, 2010. 8:22 PMorksecurity
says:
Many hard drives now ship with a utility to copy full content efficiently from one drive to another. Those which don't often have such a tool available for download from their manufacturer's website. Even XCOPY can do this, given the right options. But the new image will wind up identical to the old drive, so unless you change your drive-letter assignments or reconfigure a lot of software you may not be able to execute programs directly from the new drive, so this is much easier if you plan to swap the drives physically or if you're just moving user data.
As to whether it's a good idea... I'd keep the operating system and essential applications on the internal hard drive, since the machine can access it much more rapidly than the external drive. Use the external for data you don't need to access as quickly, as often, or as intensively.
As to whether it's a good idea... I'd keep the operating system and essential applications on the internal hard drive, since the machine can access it much more rapidly than the external drive. Use the external for data you don't need to access as quickly, as often, or as intensively.
Jul 7, 2010. 6:11 PMaerilus
says:
acronis true image home would be the easiest solution especially if is worth it to you to for it to just work. I assume you are trying to copy your boot drive from within windows, acronis can do this because it can start up before alot of windows services that normally lock files and processes. the other way to do it would be to use a boot disk i think a bartpe disk has an imaging utility on it. i guess you could also just copy everything over as long as you are doing it from a boot disk but i would recommend just imaging it. hirens boot cd has some imaging tools and you can always use a linux cd and dd but it s pain. really all you need to backup just to get your date is your user files which are located at c:\documents and setting\"whatever you user name is" for xp and c:\users\"whatever your user name is" in 7 and vista but if you want a complete backup that you can recover from i would clone the whole drive.
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