Copying hard drive -- is it possible?

by madampince Jul 29, 2007 7:44AM PDT

Hello -- I have a question that's difficult to me, although probably not to those who frequent this forum. Please be patient.

I have an insanely small C drive -- 5 MB. The person who partioned it, a friend of my husband's, refuses to resize it. Yes, he's an *******. The copy of XP that he gave us to use on the disk is not genuine, nor do I have have any disks to back it up with.

Even though I have all my programs loaded to another hard drive, the Program File on C has become enormous and is no longer running efficiently. So-called friend refuses to help. Hubby wants to know this: if we buy another, much larger hard drive and copy the C drive to it, will it just start humming and work? Or do we have to rip everything down, pay a boatload of money for software, and start from scratch?

Please no posts on how I'm getting what I deserve, etc. Hubby handled setting up the computer, he loves to cut corners, and stupid drunk friend talked him into this. I'm just trying to solve the problem as best I can.

Discussion is locked

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Ok, what OS can we install now?

by r. proffitt Former Forum moderator Jul 29, 2007 8:12AM PDT

That machine probably came with some OS. Let's go back to that?

XP is not up for discussion since it's against the forum rules to help with pirated goods no matter what the excuse.

Bob

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No OS

by madampince Jul 29, 2007 8:38AM PDT

It didn't come with an OS -- it was built from a kit.

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OS differences

by madampince Jul 29, 2007 8:53AM PDT

Bob --

Since it appears I'll have to buy new software, what is the difference between XP home and pro? This pirated version is called Scene, which is some sort of scaled-down Pro. Home versions are a lot less expensive on Ebay. Hubby has XP Pro, but we're not networked. I don't do anything unusual that I can see requiring Pro, but am obviously not a software expert.

I'd like to go to Linux, but am not sure how I'd finesse it with my ISP -- they don't even provide support for Firefox and Thunderbird, so there's no way on earth they'd provide support for any version of Linux.

Thanks.

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Since the system is "home built" ...

by Edward ODaniel Jul 29, 2007 10:05AM PDT

you could make good use of XP Home OEM and it would be the cheapest way to get XP as your OS. If you go the XP route do yourself a favor and get one with SP2 already integrated.

Ebay would be one route for OEM and Pricewatch would be another:
http://www.pricewatch.com/software_oper_system/windows_xp_home.htm

Other Operating Systems at Pricewatch including Win 98 are also available:
http://www.pricewatch.com/m-182.htm

If your Internet access is broadband through a router Linux would access the Internet quite handily and setting up a modem isn't too difficult assuming the modem is NOT a "Win-modem" that requires Windows to function.

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I see one unanswered question

by Steven Haninger Jul 29, 2007 11:05AM PDT

It appears your C: drive contains the OS and another drive contains most or all of your programs. It also appears that your ideal situation would be just fix the problem with the primary drive and expect your programs to still run. While it's certainly possible to clone the entire contents of your C: drive to another hard drive while resizing the partition at the same time, it's not a good idea with a bogus copy of XP. It might refuse to run on the new hardware. As well, if you install a legitimate copy of XP on a new drive and connect the old drive your program are still not going to run. These will need to be reinstalled as well. You will need the disks for these too. It's quite possible that most of your saved documents are on the C: drive as these tend to be attached to the user that's logged in. Hang onto both drives for now. Good luck.

Copying hard drive -- is it possible?

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