Ok here's my situation,i want to install a 500 gb sata hard drive to my system.At the moment my current operating system is on an 80gb ide hard drive along with everything else i have stored, is there a way to transfer all info.onto the sata drive?Or do i have to do a back-up of everything and do a complete re-install on the new drive? Confused been awhile since i have done a major undertaking like this.

One thing that one might want to do is put your documents, installation files, etc. on your large drive & leave windows & your installed programs on the other drive like they are now. That way your docs are protected in case windows screws up. If you do that there is no need to reinstall.

If you want to have windows on your new drive then the cheapest & safest thing to do is to reinstall windows.You just can't copy the files & expect it to work because it won't.

Personally I have a 80 gb drive with just my installed programs & my OSs and a much larger drive with everything else.

I second Townsbg's suggestion. I tweak/play with my computer a lot, and I've learned that the most trouble-free method when it comes to these is to have the OS and programs on a separate partition.

Perhaps if you wish to simply "clone" your current hard disk onto the new SATA hard disk, you might want to check out Norton Ghost. I've not used it before, but from what I've heard it seems to be able to create clones/backups of a hard disk.

Norton ghost costs money, 70 USD. It'd be far cheaper to reinstall windows. Let me clarify, you are supposed to be able to use software like norton ghost to copy your installation of windows for backup purposes although I've never done that. However you would have use some kind of specialized software to transfer one install of windows to another drive because it won't work if you try to copy the files manually. The only files you can just move from one drive to another are your personal documents, pics, music, etc. Program & system files (windows) have to be installed because some of them have to go to certain locations on the drive. Windows probably won't let you copy some of them anyway. Let us know what you want to do so we can help you further. The easiest thing to do is just to move your personal documents onto your new hard drive & not even worry about reinstalling windows. I'm assuming that you have a desktop. Is that right?

Learn something new every day. Replacing/Upgrading your Hard Drive using Ghost. - Computer Help Forum

My apologies, I forgot to mention that Norton Ghost is a commercial product.

And also once again, Roky to the rescue! Haha. I also tried to find alternatives to Norton Ghost that does the same thing and here are some of the results.

PING (Partimage Is Not Ghost)

or

DriveImage XML Backup Software

I'm in the same situation,wanting to copy an entire hdd (from my old pc),to a new one.

Originally Posted by Kaistar

My apologies, I forgot to mention that Norton Ghost is a commercial product.

My question is, do you have to buy NG or can you just use the downloadable diskette,from Roky's smartestcomputing link:

"I’m using a Norton Ghost 2003 boot diskette. You don’t actually need the whole program to do this although if you do have the whole program, you can use it to create the Ghost boot diskette I will be using for this demonstration.
If you don’t have Norton Ghost, you can download This File to create the boot diskette that you can use."

Thanks for all your help!!I installed it successfully by moving all important files to new drive,leaving the Os on old drive.Thanks again.

Uk Dave, The exe. is all you need to clone. Fits on a Floppy. Smokey who wrote that tutorial is a professional computer repair tech here in the US. I've used it once and it worked like a charm.

chopper I think that you'll be happy just having your personal files on a secondary drive. One thing I should note is that you can have the "my documents" shortcut that windows puts on the desktop & start menu reference the new location for your documents which is what I recommend that you do. All you have to do is right click on the my douments icon on your desktop or start menu, choose properties, choose the location tab (I think thats what it is; I'm running vista now), & then click on move. Browse to the location (folder) where you put your documents & then click select folder. It will ask you if you want to move the location. Click yes. Providing you have the folders in your new documents folder named right, your pictures, music, etc. shortcuts on the start menu should point to your new location. It might have been better to do this earlier to make sure that you got it right.

However if you keep any documents on your desktop instead of in your documents folder those files are still on the drive that has windows on it. You can have windows reference another folder for this but that is tricky & involves editing the registry so I can help you to do that if you want me to but it doesn't matter if you don't keep anything on your desktop. Let me know.