Moving Programs/Files to New Hard Drive

[CWsports]

I just purchased a new Dell hard drive (placed order on Thursday at 4am online and it got here today - gotta love that).

I have a CD-Writer Plus on my old hard drive. Is there an easy way to transfer everything on my old hard drive to my new hard drive by burning it onto a CD and then transferring it over? If so can someone please give me some step by step instructions? I'm anxious to test this baby out!!! /images/graemlins/laugh.gif

[Alobar]

an easier (and much faster) way to do this, is to just hook both hard drives up, and copy everything you want over

[CWsports]

[ QUOTE ]
an easier (and much faster) way to do this, is to just hook both hard drives up, and copy everything you want over

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How would I go about doing this?

[bonanz]

are you saying you want to replace your primary hard drive? or just backup a bunch of files?

[CWsports]

I want to take all the program and files on my current hard drive and copy them to my new hard drive. I want all the programs and files to be on both hard drives.

[wonderwes]

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I want to take all the program and files on my current hard drive and copy them to my new hard drive. I want all the programs and files to be on both hard drives.

[/ QUOTE ]

Pretty simple. Leave your current HD where it is. Hook up the 2nd one up as a slave on the primary ide, or if you have room, put it on the 2nd ide cable. Not sure what it what? Easy solution. Your cdrom is probably acting as a slave on the primary IDE. You can pull that cable off the cdrom, make sure the jumper is set the same like on the cd rom (probably set as slave) then when you boot up, your machine should see two hard drives.

copying files should be easy, copying entire programs wont be because most .dll files in windows link to the original directory the program was installed in.

As long as the drive has already been formatted, when you boot up your machine, you should see 2 hard drives and you should be able to copy any/all files over.

--- Wonderwes

[cbfair]

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[ QUOTE ]
I want to take all the program and files on my current hard drive and copy them to my new hard drive. I want all the programs and files to be on both hard drives.

[/ QUOTE ]


Pretty simple. Leave your current HD where it is. Hook up the 2nd one up as a slave on the primary ide, or if you have room, put it on the 2nd ide cable. Not sure what it what? Easy solution. Your cdrom is probably acting as a slave on the primary IDE. You can pull that cable off the cdrom, make sure the jumper is set the same like on the cd rom (probably set as slave) then when you boot up, your machine should see two hard drives.

copying files should be easy, copying entire programs wont be because most .dll files in windows link to the original directory the program was installed in.

As long as the drive has already been formatted, when you boot up your machine, you should see 2 hard drives and you should be able to copy any/all files over.

--- Wonderwes

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Yeah, what he said. It sounds like you're mostly looking for a backup of your current drive's contents. If this is the case, you can set windows to run a backup of all your files/programs and complete "system state". This will include .dlls, registry entries, internet favorites and cookies...the works.

Perform the steps Wonderwes describes (there are other ways, but I think his will work) then go to Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools->Backup and then go through the steps in the wizard (select "Back up everything on my computer".

Hope this helps.

[PhilTheThrill14]

FYI:
Your programs won't work on the new drive by copying them over from the old drive. They will need to be reinstalled on the new drive so they get loaded into the registry properly.

The best way to copy the data over is to get the new machine up and running, unplug the CD-ROM (or CD-RW) and plug in the old drive - it should show up as your D Drive on the new machine. Then you can drag and drop the data from the old drive to the new drive. Just be sure to only copy the stuff you want, and not stuff like the WINDOWS or WINNT directory - that could render your new machine unbootable.

[CWsports]

[ QUOTE ]
FYI:
Your programs won't work on the new drive by copying them over from the old drive. They will need to be reinstalled on the new drive so they get loaded into the registry properly.

The best way to copy the data over is to get the new machine up and running, unplug the CD-ROM (or CD-RW) and plug in the old drive - it should show up as your D Drive on the new machine. Then you can drag and drop the data from the old drive to the new drive. Just be sure to only copy the stuff you want, and not stuff like the WINDOWS or WINNT directory - that could render your new machine unbootable.

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I'm confused on how exactly to unplug the CD-ROM and plug in the old hard drive and have it show as my D drive on the new hard drive. Can someone explain to a computer illiterate how to do this? Should there be some type of cable going between the hard drives?

[Alobar]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
FYI:
Your programs won't work on the new drive by copying them over from the old drive. They will need to be reinstalled on the new drive so they get loaded into the registry properly.

The best way to copy the data over is to get the new machine up and running, unplug the CD-ROM (or CD-RW) and plug in the old drive - it should show up as your D Drive on the new machine. Then you can drag and drop the data from the old drive to the new drive. Just be sure to only copy the stuff you want, and not stuff like the WINDOWS or WINNT directory - that could render your new machine unbootable.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm confused on how exactly to unplug the CD-ROM and plug in the old hard drive and have it show as my D drive on the new hard drive. Can someone explain to a computer illiterate how to do this? Should there be some type of cable going between the hard drives?

[/ QUOTE ]

open up your computer, there will be a thin wide grey cable going into the back of your CD-ROM drive, take this cable out and plut it into the back of the new hard drive. You also have to plug a power cable into your new hard drive, find your power supply (top back of the computer can) and all those wires that are coming out of it, find one that isnt plugged into something, and plug it into the hard drive. Make sure you have the hard drive mounted to the computer (there should be lots of slots below where your other hard drive is mounter, just slide it in, and screw it down).

before you start touching stuff inside your computer, make sure you touch the metal of the can first, and obviously make sure your computer is turned off and unplugged.