I know that both Seagate and Western Digital retail drives come with a CD
for installing the new drive.  If you purchase an OEM drive then you
probably didn't get one.  I'm pretty sure you can go through each maker's
web site and download their software.  My last experience was using
Seagate's installation utility, but WD's works very similarly.  You keep the
original drive, install the new drive as a slave, boot to Windows, install
the software and run it, select that you will be replacing the original
drive and that you want to copy the original C partition.  This is a much
faster way than trying to backup and restore to the new drive.  When you are
done copying, power down the system, remove the original 120 Gb drive and
jumper the 320 as the master.

You can make as many partitions as you want of the unused space.

Ron Jobe



On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 12:10 PM, g.Computer9f <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Does anyone know - if I replace the primary (system) hard drive (seagate
> 120GB) on my PC with a larger drive (WD 320GB) with 3 partitions instead of
> 2, will I still be able to restore my Acronis images that were made on the
> prior drive (different brand - seagate to wd)?  Has anyone done this?
>
> I don't have time to get everything - entire reinstallation - done at once
> and I wanted to shift back and forth between my current system setup and the
>  new one that I'm working on setting up, using Acronis image files (I have
> image FILES, not cloned partitions).  I'm wondering if I start the new
> install on the new drive, whether I will have trouble with my PC (windows
> xp) recognizing drivers or partitions for the hard drive.  I CAN elect to
> restore the MBR, if that helps.
>
> Thanks,
> AnnaSummers
>
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