I have used up to 38.5G of my original Dimension 8200 40G HD and have purchased a Western Digital 160G to replace it. I have tried to clone the old drive to the new one by using Norton Ghost 2003 but there is insufficient space to create a virtual partition. I tried to clone the drive using a Western Digital tool which appeared to work but then Windows XP SP2 would not complete the boot. I went online and found that it is indeed difficult to clone an original Dell installed HD; however I don't want to go through the hastle of reinstalling the hundreds of programs I have. Is there any way around this? If there is a simplew way to clone, please let me know. Thanks in advance...
Try the WD software. 160 on the end of cable, 40gb on middle. Boot to the WD software and copy it. You MAY have a problem with the drive being >137gb, but give it a try.
I don't think you need much space for the virtual partition. I would uninstall some programs or backup any large document files (pictures, MP3's etc) to CD if you have a burner or an external drive if you have one, then remove them from the old drive to free up space. If not, try networking to another computer or uploading to an online storage site - yahoo briefcase, etc. The program route would be the easiest as you can just reload the programs after you get the new drive going. Ghost is your best bet for cloning the drive in my opinion.
Thanks, I re-tried the WD software instructing the software that I would be using the new 160G drive as a boot drive and it worked great. Now my problem is that WD uses a DDO to overcome the drive size which prevents me from using Norton's Go Back etc. (I lost the use of system restore when I changed from FAT32 on the old 40G boot drive to NTFS on the new 160G boot drive.) This leaves me with no way to "restore" after any type of failure. Any ideas? Thanks again... Bill
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