What would be the best way to upgrade/replace a hard drive without reinstalling windows? I was thinking of marking the partition on the new HD as active, then booting the system with a rescue cd and simply copying the contents of the old drive onto the new, and then swapping the drives master/slave on the controller. Another option I think I can try is Norton Ghosts Disk to Disk copy, but im not sure how the partition structure on the new drive will be if the new drive is larger than the old. Anyhow a definite answer on this would be appreciated.
I tried making the partition active and using ghost 'disk to disk', and that did work, but with windows XP as the OS, I cant login as any of the users on the new drive. I assume this is a security feature. There a way around this? Repair install?
I know it's more work but I have to recomend fresh os install on your c partition in the new drive,than no conflicts
Nm I got it to work. It was actually a 'partition to disk' that I had tried that didnt work. A full 'disk to disk' works like a charm.
