Copy all of old harddrive to new one

[Bioture]

hi I'm getting a new computer, which comes with just a formatted harddrive (no OS). What I want to do is to copy everything from the computer I'm using now, to that new harddrive so that when I boot up my new computer it'll be just like my old comp except faster.

I looked online and some articles told me to use dos' xcopy, but then it says theres problems with it handling long filenames - others told me to use norton ghost or 3rd party software to do it.

I'm thinking that I just set the new harddrive (which is 200gigs, isn't there a problem with drives over 120gigs?) as the slave, use xcopy, then set the new harddrive to master and the old harddrive to slave.

Never really done this before, I'm quite horrible at computer hardware so any help you can give me would be great...

[Kolar]

If you feel safe enough and wouldn't void any warranties I would use Norton Ghost with the old HDD as slave on the main cable. I've done it many times at school and work and I've never had a single problem or case of lost data.


Some computer shops or places like best buy, future shop ect.. might do it for 50-100$, if you don't want to do it youself. Also remember to remove the power cable while installing hardware and ground yourself before starting.

[Stabwound]

Well, you can't just copy the harddrive over to another computer with no OS and expect it to work. That's like taking a human brain and putting it in another person. The computer will probably have a seizure when it tries to load Windows.

[Kolar]

Well, you can't just copy the harddrive over to another computer with no OS and expect it to work. That's like taking a human brain and putting it in another person. The computer will probably have a seizure when it tries to load Windows.

opps my bad.

Put the old HDD on primary to the new on the slave. Then switch the new one back to primary when Ghost is done.

Edit: Just to make it clear, Norton Ghost doesn't copy every single file, it copies the image of a Hard Drive to another. Copying each file through DOS or Windows to another HDD probably won't work.