I posted this under one of the sticky posts, which probably wasn't a good place get some attention.

I would like to buy a 7200rpm HDD as my second drive, mirror my current boot drive onto it and then make it my boot drive.

Do I have to physically swap the 7200 HDD with the old boot drive? If so, will the brackets swap between bays or do I have to swap out the drives between brackets?

Any suggestions as to the best program to mirror my boot drive onto the new drive?

Thanks for the help.

First suggestion, tell us what type of laptop you have. In my 8887, I *think* there was something in the BIOS about which drive booted first (C or F - F being the second one in the rear media bay, go figure); I'm not sure on that.

Generally, yeah, you mirror it all over, then physically swap them. However, get a real mirroring tool (or boot off a Knoppix CD and use the linux tools that are better at this) because you'll want an exact duplicate of the drive (boot sectors, etc).

Most people just install the newer/faster drive as C: and re-install windows and their apps, leaving the old drive to hold old data (and delete the old unused stuff).

Lots of options here, and it will involve some time on your part.

-myrkat

Thanks for the advice. I have an 8887. I have an additional question before I get started...my drive came with what looks like two rectangular foam pads and a square foam pad in a second ziplock attached to the drive shipping bag. What are these for?

Mikel

Any additional assistance is appreciated...

I bought Drive Image 7 because Ghost wasn't available in the local comp store. It will make a disk copy of my old C drive to the F drive, but when I move F to the disk0 position, it is recognized in BIOS, and windows boots up until the light blue Winxp screen, where usually it says Welcome and has my Account button to log in. However, no Welcome and no account button shows up.

I've tried DiskCopy with/without enabling the Copy MBR function. Same result. My old drive is a 40G Toshiba and the new drive is 60G Hitachi. Do I need to make the partition sizes the same? Drive Image says it will expand the old drive image to the entire new partition and doesn't mention resizing (among many other things missing from the guide and online support).

I looked at the Knoppic CD but can't find any instructions on how to use it (not a Linus user).

I have a 8887, 1GB ram, 40G Toshiba 5400 HDD, 60G Hitachi 7200 HDD, 2.66 P4 and am using XP Pro. I have a very well maintained C drive customized just how I like it and a very large MMORPG game I play. I'd hate to have to install windows again, re-do all my settings, and download the game patches again.

Thanks again for any advice.

Mike

The foam pads are likely for support/noise absorption (my guess). I didn't have any or use any on my upgrade.

For the mirroring issue, my guess is there's something (driver) that windows uses for one manufacturer and not the other (perhaps). Back everything up (if you haven't already) and try a Windows Repair on the new drive after imaging to it.

Do this by booting from the Windows CD and selecting the option for repair. This is a somewhat damaging step, in that it replaces any updated files with the original, stock ones, so you'll likely need to re-download all the Windows Updates you've applied.

(Unless you are familiar with the Slipstream process, whereby you re-create a windows boot cd using updated files... it's a technical process that most do not do).

-myrkat

I finally got a response from Symantec support (who bought Drive Image) and they instructed me to boot to Repair and FIXMBR. It told me it fixed the MBR but it still wouldn't boot past the light blue Windows xp screen. Before I do the full Repair, I'll wait and see what they advise.

If I do the Repair, will I have to install all my programs again or just all the windows updates? If I have to re-install my programs, I might as well just do a fresh install and return Drive Image and get my money back.

Thanks again for the advice. This is a great forum.

That's where it gets ugly. You can do different things during the repair process, so if you repair the registry, then all the registry stuff is broken and things need to be reinstalled (or re-imported, if you exported any of it to a .REG file).

It's messy and I never like to give advice on selective repair, so let's hope Symantec has a good solution.

-myrkat

No joy from Symantec. The suggested trying FIXBOOT C: which didn't work either. Their last recommendation is a Repair install.

Guess I'll be spending a few hours getting the new disk installed and configured. I should be able to import my settings from the old disk and well as any data which should make it somewhat easier.

Thanks again Myrkat!

Mike