Moving OS's to larger drives

1st off, I apologize if I am posting this in the wrong place. Hope you'll bear with me.

Here's my situation. I have an upcoming job in two months that is going to require me to replace a number of PC's hard drives with larger ones, Not just files but systems and all. I would really like to do this without reinstalling the OS's... hopefully, some kind of total copy so I can merely go into the bios, change boot drive, reboot, and voila, everything the same except on larger drives. At the moment I have one PC to try this on and I have a trial copy of Paragon Hard Disk Manager 2010 Professional. This PC dual boots XP Pro and Sabayon Linux on the same drive. Similar setups are on the upcoming jobs. Any suggestions (or link(s) to the appropriate docs), or advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!

 

Cougaram,

What I recommend is simply copying the hard disks, using wizards>copy hard disk. There will be an option to re-size partitions proportionately, checking this box will expand the partitions to their new sizes on the larger disk, leaving it unchecked will create partitions of the same size, leaving the additional space on the new drives as unallocated.

 

Ok, and after everything has been copied, I guess then I should turn off the PC and change the jumper on the new drive to master. Then when I turn on the PC, the PC will boot using the new master drive? Is that correct or do I need to do anything else? Thanks!

 

also if you download manuals it will give you a good idea about it

http://www.paragon-software.com/downloads/manual.html

please check sector by sector cloning as well

and p2p os .....etc please read the whole manual its worth reading

 

also it would be really kind of you Paragon_Matt

if you can give us screen shot of step by step process or video if there any given on youtube.......etc

regarding disk cloning and booting from new cloned disk


also i have 3 questions
question 1

i have a disk 120 gb approx 100 gb from windows and rest approx 20 hidden as recovery given default by vendor specific

now if i do sector by sector cloning

as your wise words

##There will be an option to re-size partitions proportionately, checking this box will expand the partitions to their new sizes on the larger disk##

i put it resize option

is there any chances of conflict if there are hidden encrypted type partitions when i boot system form it and also if i recover system form new partition with its own build in recovery which is as well cloned on new harddisk

as far i got answer is no

but its nice if you confirm it

question 2

i got a router astaro gateway it got 7 to 10 partitions of 40 gb hardisk i dont remember the exact number of partitions ..............

i want to make a clone of it to disk2 of 250 gb in case if some thing happen i just need to replace the drive and work same as before

now do i need to delete the entire disk before while making sector by sector copy it does every thing auto mode i mean deleting making partitions etc

my 3rd question

on same disk2 which i cloned by astaro sector by sector 40 gb now can i use rest of part of partition for cloning other as well on partition basis will it store mbr as well

in simple words

disk A 40 gb clone to disk B 250 gb entire hardisk sector by sector mode

rest left 200 gb approx to clone different partition of 50 gb each of different 4 pcs

now when i backup will it backup mbr as well of cloned partition i know those cannot use for booting but for cloning(backing-up) including mbr of drive C partition sector-by sector on drive K partition of other harddisk is it possible

 

Another question. I have two pc's I am updating hard drives. I know I am going to use Paragon to move an OS to a larger HD on one pc because it will be Seagate to WD (mixed drives from different mfg's). My other pc will be getting a WD to WD transfer. Would I be wiser to use WD's clone tool since they are similar drives (only the sizes are different) instead of Paragon?

 

The drive manufacturers will not make a difference, rather, it's the type of hard drive interface could be a concern (SATA, SCSI, IDE, etc).

 

I have completed the clone but it stopped at 99% and said I needed to run chkdsk in order to complete. I'm doing that as we speak. I hope the copy includes my boot manager lilo as I dual boot into XP and Gentoo. Any suggestions if this thing won't boot after pulling the source disk and resetting the HD jumper? BTW, both drives are sata.

(Note, I thought sata drives didn't need jumpers but I found out the hard way (trial and error) that the WD drives do indeed need them)

 

Well, four attempts, four failures. I've ran CHKDSK before my attempts and after. No joy. Also, I've noticed a number of unallocated spaces everytime I have tried to clone.

Incorrect dir structure - errors in dir tree. CHKDSK should be used to correct

Error source: Hard Disk Manager
Error code: 0x10021

 

First run the check disk on the Windows partition. Interestingly since you mentioned Linux as your dual boot, we may want to run the sector by sector or RAW copy instead. The destination hard drive is required to be at least the same size or larger.