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[The Melancholy Of 110mb.com]

My 320 is running out of room -.- Now what i need to know is if i go out today buy a 500 or greater and just copy and paste all files including the crap (as in 100% data transfer) would i be able to boot windows on the 500?

no true true rush i still have about 6 or so weeks before it is critical (as in less then 1 GB)

[ultimatebuster]

in theory, yes. You computer should boot fine.

Maybe you will get a msg saying that it found new hardware. That's about it

If it doesn't work, swap the old one in

BTW, do you have 2 hd spot?

[Piotr GRD]

If after copying you'll switch the hard drives that your new will be C: and no any other hardware will change (as mainboard etc.) - I believe that yes.

[The Melancholy Of 110mb.com]

in theory, yes. You computer should boot fine.

Maybe you will get a msg saying that it found new hardware. That's about it

If it doesn't work, swap the old one in

BTW, do you have 2 hd spot?

yes my computer MB (the one which is curently MIA no joke read below ) is able to hold i think 1 IDE (my 160) and 4 SATA (2 DVD-RW 2 HDD if i do this)

If after copying you'll switch the hard drives that your new will be C: and no any other hardware will change (as mainboard etc.) - I believe that yes.

ok thanks

here is the true reason why i asked:

ASUS told me they never recived my MB ever and when i went over to the company i bought it from they claimed they handded it back after the second drop off... the weird part of all this is he showed me the Excel doc with all RMA and tracking stuff he only had one day when i dropped it off (the first time) so now i dont know if i will every see my money or MB again...(60+ gone ) im waiting for contact back from ASUS on the matter -.- thats why im asking if i had the computer fully running instead of using the HDD as external storage i would not have this issue as i have another 100 or so GB on the 160 -.- but hauling the 160 out of the case is going to be a chanllenge of its own (yet ill prob have to do it to get my resume off -.-)

But thanks for the quick responses

[Mop (Gb)]

Wait, wait, do you mean copy the operating system and your files onto the new drive and boot off it? That WON'T work. I've tried it. Windows got angry about stuff when I booted and I had to re-install it. Then there's master boot records, I don't know much about them but I know that just copying files won't change them and you need them to boot properly/at all.

[The Melancholy Of 110mb.com]

Wait, wait, do you mean copy the operating system and your files onto the new drive and boot off it? That WON'T work. I've tried it. Windows got angry about stuff when I booted and I had to re-install it. Then there's master boot records, I don't know much about them but I know that just copying files won't change them and you need them to boot properly/at all.

yea direct copy as in copy every file every little thing from one to the new... but if i do i will not be deleting the old directly after just in case but what you just said it would not work

[inp o҉rtb]

Well, there's nothing keeping you from copying your files normally, then extracting the bootsector. You could also just make a disk image.

[The Melancholy Of 110mb.com]

Well, there's nothing keeping you from copying your files normally, then extracting the bootsector. You could also just make a disk image.

and how might i ask i extract the bootsector? the disk image i know how but what good would that really do? it just makes a big file and usually useless -.- unless extracted (either that or im supper confusedif thats the case confuser can i have your title?

[Mop (Gb)]

The disk image would copy EVERYTHING on the disk, 100%. It doesn't record it as files, it records the actual binary sequence on the disk (Or something like that), so nothing is missed, files, boot stuff, it all goes.

But yeah its very bigg.

[inp o҉rtb]

Disk images with a lot of empty space tend to be really compressible. On a *nix system, it's quite easy to make a bigass file that fills all remaining space with zeros, then delete the file to reclaim the space. And dd is all you need to extract anything from a disk.

[The Melancholy Of 110mb.com]

well if i was going to do the image way i would need a HDD or something with enough space to hold it

The joys of being broke -.- i have enough to get threw the next semester with out books and paying most of the money but very little lee-way (or non) for tech poop failing so basically if i was to create a image and then extract it to the new HDD in theory it should work correct?

[soren121]

It's called cloning. And it should work fine, as Mop explained.

[inp o҉rtb]

well if i was going to do the image way i would need a HDD or something with enough space to hold it

It's called stream processing. Compress the data from the disk before it gets written to the target file. When you restore... decompress the data from the file before it gets written to the disk.

[Primefalcon]

I hate to ask this but what about legality speaking?

you are only aloud to have 1 install of MS Windows? wouldn't this break that?

[inp o҉rtb]

A backup copy sitting on a harddrive can hardly be considered an installation; it does nothing

[Primefalcon]

question is though, would Microsoft see it that way?

[inp o҉rtb]

Not with WinVista. But WinXP's license is substantially more lax. iirc Mel's got WinXP.

[The Melancholy Of 110mb.com]

it is not like im going to be using the image to distro the windows to the public how i see it as long as that registration key is to only one computer they should not have a problem with it and if they do it just shows they truly are greedy pigs that dont know how to make good OS's (also this is partially why i will not go with vista )

BTW what program should i use for the image?

[robleyd]

Something here should work for you - http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/backupandimage.shtml

Disclaimer - I haven't used any of them so can't speak from experience.

[manicgames]

You should be able to transport it to a new hard drive, I've done it with Ubuntu, and Windows 98.