Transferring XP operating system to new computer.

Hi guys and gals. I'm in the process of building a new system and need to transfer my operating system and all files from the old hard drive to the new hard drive.

The donor hard drive is an IDE and the new computer will have SATA.

Operating system is XP. I have the install disc, but prefer not to lose everything else on the original hard drive if at all possible.

What is the best/safest way to transfer all of the contents of the old hard drive to the new hard drive?

 

You can use any drive cloning program to copy from one drive to another, but keep in mind you'll need to perform a repair XP install on the hardware, at a minimum. When XP is installed with one set of hardware, and you change all the hardware, XP simply does not boot. A repair install is the minimum requirement, sometimes a clean install is required.
Here's some free drive cloning tools:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/HDClone_Free_Edition_d3809.html
http://www.majorgeeks.com/EaseUs_Disk_Copy_d4845.html
http://www.majorgeeks.com/SelfImage_d5588.html (I've never used this so I have no idea if it will work for you)
There's others in the Back Up downloads section.

 

Gracias Amigo!
I downloaded EaseUs onto a spare computer, burned a cd and got the OS swapped over.

I did have to do a repair and had to validate my software with Microsoft, due to the hardware changes, but it worked like a charm! :celebrate