HI:

There are 2 easy ways to do this. Each way does not require another machine
or external storage device to do the work, but does require you to open up
the machine and install the new drive and old drive together for a while,
at least.  Dependiing on the OS you are using you may have to "adjust" what
I am saying, to fit your situation.

I recommend you install the new drive in the primary master position, and
the old drive in the master secondary postion (even if you have to
temporarly disconnect the cd-rom that is problably in the master secondary
position.)  You do not need any other ide devices attached at this time.
This may save you from having to deal with master/slave jumper issues.  You
will have to go ito the BIOS once or twice and chage the settings on the
ide drives and maybe the boot order of the devices.  Remember to go back
when all done and put in correct order again.

But even before you do that, first use windows diskcleanup to get rid of
any tempory files you do not need on the old drive.  Then run scandisk or
similarprogram to check the drive for errors and thirdly, run a disk defrag
utility to put all the files in proper order to increase the speed of file
access.

1) Obtain a copy of norton's Ghost (latest version possible, would be
better), or similar HDD coping program, and you can make an exact copy of
the old drive to the new drive and you will be off and running in 10-30
minutes.  Make sure you get the correct version of the software to handle
the OS that you are dealing with.  For instance, Ghost 5.1 will not do
Windows 2000.

2) Only problem with the above is if you have an issues with what's loaded,
ie maybe getting messages on boot up that a file can not be found and you
have to hit a key to continue (happens if you've deleted things incorrectly
with w98 for instance) you might want to eliminate that by doing a fresh
relaod of the software, mainboard driver inf files, and device driver files.
You will have to load all the programs you want again also.

It's a little more work but really a good thing to do once in a while.  You
can then access your data that you "need" from the 2nd drive by installing
it is the system and dragging the data files from it to the new drive using
windows explorer.

The other way, which is what i usually do for customers, is if you are
familar with the old DOS command, "xcopy" you can copy the old hard drive
to a temp directory (ie c:\xxolddrv) in the new larger drive, and again use
the windows explorer to drag and drop files as needed.  you can access the
caommabd prompt by pressing the F8 key at windows startup.

I like this way if the old drive is "suspicious" and not reliable enough
for me to leave it in the system as a 2nd drive.  Once the customer no
longer needs any of the files they can delete the directory and then run
defrag again.

Then you remove the old drive and re-attach anything you disconnected prior.










GOD BLESS AMERICA!

JOE LORE
MICRO COMPUTER CENTER, INC.
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