Transferring WinXP boot partition to new HDD

[Celeron Gamer]

I have a 40gb PATA Maxtor drive that has my primary XP installation moved to my 1TB seagate 7200.12. I tried using DriveImage XML to do the 'drive to drive' copy, but that result in not booting.

The config i have now is

40gb hdd, 1 partition

1tb hdd, 40gb partition, another 40gb partition, and the rest of the space as it's own partition.

I tried Windows Recovery Console, fixmbr, but to no avail.

Is there anything that have experience in this kind of job help me out?:confused:

[jbartlett323]

I have gone from PATA to SATA many times without issue. However i usually use Ghost and am unfamiliar with Driveimage. Do you boot to a disk with Driveimage? if not then i would say this is your major issue.
I would try to borrow someones bootable Ghost, do a straight disk to disk (don't worry about partitions aside from adjusting intial partition) and you should have no issues. :up:

EDIT: and i would make you OS at least 100GB. I install 4 games I'm out of C: space. with only 40GB I would be lucky to get 2.
EDIT2: If you already have data on the TB drive this gets alot more difficult.

[Celeron Gamer]

Thanks, jbartlett, I'll see if i can find someone with norton ghost.

Anyways, DriveImage XML is a 'hot' backup utility (backup in windows) which i guess is not the best lol.

Do you need to do anything else with ghost to make my 1tb hard drive bootable? Or does Norton ghost take care of that?

[jbartlett323]

Nope once the boot partition is on the new drive, just unplug the old. Worst case you may need to boot to windows recovery console and run fixboot and fixmbr but i have only had that happen once and i have done this many times. You might also have to switch the boot order in BIOS.
Yeah if DriveImage is an in windows backup then the image it produces is most likely just that: and image file. That would then need to be restored somehow. Ghost makes a literal bit for bit copy to the new drive, not to an image file (although you could if you want).
Good Luck!

And i'm sure there are plenty of friends on the net that would let you borrow ghost. temporarily of course!