Upgrading to a SATA hard drive...

[mjolnir1134]

Howdy all, I think I have gotten a deal for a SATA drive (FINALLY for me!) off of Craigslist and I want to know something here...:

I have Windows XP on my 3 year old IDE hard drive which I have been using on the entire time I had it. I want to "upgrade" to a better, bigger, and faster hard drive, which is the aforemented SATA one. I never done this before, I've heard its possible, and I need some input by people who have done it before.

The main thing I'm concerned about is if I "clone" my Windows XP on my old HDD to the new HDD, will any of that Microsoft licensing conflict any of it because its on a different hard drive? I don't want to end up with a voided key or something and have to buy another OEM of XP. I got Norton Ghost, because I heard that is what you need for that kind of thing...

Also, after the process of cloning, does that mean I can use my Windows XP on both my old and new hard drive? Or does Norton Ghost simply "transfer" everything to the new one and leave the partition completely empty on my old HDD?

Whach'u got to say about this TechIMO'ers? :|

[outlaw2001it]

Hello,
Going from IDE to SATA: in your BIOS make sure that you configure the SATA drive as a standard IDE drive (paragraph 4.3.5 in the users manual), you can download that from here if you don't have it:
http://support.asus.com/download/dow...us&model=P5LD2

When using Norton Ghost, the drives will be copied from one to another leaving the original drive intact.

However if you want to get the most out of your SATA drive (AHCI - Advanced Host Controller Interface) then reinstall Windows completely. Download the SATA drivers, and put them on a floppy disk. When reloading XP you'll see on the bottom to load third party drivers, follow the instructions. You can download the SATA drivers using the link above. In the manual it explains the difference between normal IDE, and AHCI.

As for Microsoft's license you shouldn't have any problems. If you do contact MS, and go through the registration process. If you need to talk to a representative just explain to them that you upgraded the hard drive.
Hope that covered everything. Take Care.

[Steve R Jones]

Cloning makes an exact duplicate of the origianl and doesn't remove the files...

Since both drive have a C drive, you can't use em at the same time. Just set the old drive aside for an emergency backup.

[mjolnir1134]

Awesome guys, ty a bunch, this is all I wanted to know.

[mjolnir1134]

Alright! I have successfully cloned my old IDE 80GB Windows XP drive into my new 300GB SATA HDD! I suppose I'll take my old drive, and reformat it with Ubuntu, and have a separate ubuntu system going since I have all the needed spare parts to build another PC now.

+++++

After cloning the HDD, I have another question for you TechIMO'ers...

I have had another IDE drive (which was alongside my aforemented old C: HDD) used as a separate add-on hard drive to store my games and videos, since that HDD was slightly faster than my C: so it was better to load games off of at the time. Now that I have my new 300GB SATA drive, I would like to put a few of my most played games into there.

Now I've heard that you can't simply just "drag" the program files folders into another drive, because when you installed the program or game, it "ties" itself with the Windows registry. Is there an easy way for me to move a bunch of my "D:\Program Files" folders of my games into the "C:\Program Files" folder in my new HDD? I'd rather not want to go through the painstaking process of uninstalling, reinstalling, and updating every single game I want to be moved, but I will if I have no other choice... what have you got to say guys?

[Steve R Jones]

You have no choice but to re-install....No real need to uninstall anything....

I would store the old IDE 80GB as an emegency backup...If the new drive died tomorrow you could plu the 80 gig in and be up and running in seconds.