next step

Alrighty, I have the new system up, intel pentium 4 and all, and I put the old hard drive from the old pavilion inside this monster. Now, how the heck do I get the files from the old drive to transfer? I'm talking MIcrosoft Word, and programs like that? I can see stuff in the E drive (which is what the old hard drive was assigned to) but I can't quite figure out how to make the switch. Can I get some help on this one? I'm confuzzled!

 

What's the OS? It makes a big difference in how you get the OS files from one HD to another HD. W98 will let you copy EVERYTHING, and I'll explain how to do it if you need help, but with XP it isn't that simple.

 

ah-ha!

It's Windows XP, the latest edition with the service pack. I have been able to transfer simple files, like my pics and such, but programs are the trick. I can open them, but I can't get them to move to the new hard drive. Well, I can open some of them...arrggghhh...so there you go.

 

Well, with XP, which is verrry picky about how you duplicate it anywhere, the easiest is to use an imaging program (Drive Image, TrueImage, Ghost, ...) and create an image *on the original drive*, then boot from the CD the imaging program makes for you when you install it, and use the Program that's on the CD to "restore" the image from the original HD to the second HD.

The idea is that you have the old HD with XP on it and all of your progs, and you have the new HD partitioned and formatted, but no Active partition on it, no OS, and no progs.

The first steps are as above.

The last steps are easy, cuz you've proven that you already know how to use a screwdriver and connect/disconnect cables and you know how to use FDisk.

Take out the orig HD and put it on the Slave (middle) conector of the IDE cable with its jumpers set to Slave, put the new HD on the Master (end) connector, jumpers set to Master. Go into the BIOS and get both HDs recognized. Exit BIOS and save settings, and let it boot to your boot floppy to go to Fdisk and remove the partition and make a new primary partition NOT ACTIVE on the old HD (making sure that you switch to Drive 2 and check to make sure you're dealing with Drive 2), then switch to drive 1, (still in FDisk) and make the partition that now has the OS and the programs and the whole ball o' wax on it, ACTIVE.

Reboot normally, hopefully to the new HD with all of your OS and progs intact.

It's a LOT easier than it sounds. It would be easier still if you had a third HD, but ...

 

oops

Thanks. I now know what I forgot to do. I forgot to set the original HD jumpers to slave! It's always the simple things we forget. Jeez. Okay, that should help a lot. The new HD already has itself as the master and is fully programed with new XP, and running fine. The old HD shows up as drive E, a seperate drive. So, if I switch the jumpers to slave, then it should work. I'll also check the bios and such to make sure it's all recognized. Then all should be good to go. I hope...but thanks for the help.

 

Glad you got it, m'fren'.