HDD Clone?

[pilotbob]

My Lenovo 3000 laptop running XP pro has outgrown it's hard drive (160GB), I have a new 500GB drive (and USB caddy) I want to replace it with. Not wanting to do a fresh install as there are too many programs installed, and all is running well too, I guess cloning is the way to go. However I've had a look at "Driveimage XML" and "CloneZilla" expecting the process to be simply click and copy, :), not so it seems. The existing drive shows 2 partitions in computer manager as follows

Disk 0. Preload C: 143.04GB NTFS and SERVICE001 6.01GB FAT32 (EISA Configuration)

I'm guessing that the "Service001" partition contains recovery data since the laptop was supplied with a Lenovo system recovery disk and not a copy of XP Pro. So question is do I simply partition the new disk with the same named partitions and clone each partition separately or is there a more straight forward option?? What's the best way to go??

 

Any or all advise gratefully recieved,

 

Bob.

 

P.S. I also have a copy of Acronis something or other :confused: on one of those repair everything DVD's if that helps.

[Dalo Harkin]

Hmm,

 

Right few issues here the Laptop HDD seems to be NTFS, I would guess that the External one is FAT32 (or it should be) or course if you were to format the external to NTFS you would lose your data.

You are going to have to get the files off the external before you can add an OS to it (or you could lose some of your data)

 

You normally have a system recovery disk/ or a recovery partition, not both.

 

You are going to have to move the info from the external to the other HDD then format the external and install the OS to it, then transfer the data back from the (old) lappy HDD to the (new that was external)

 

Make sense?

[pilotbob]

OK thanks for the quick reply, The new drive is at present totally blank, unformatted. I'm confused as to what the "SERVICE001" partition on the existing drive actually is for.

[Dalo Harkin]

It does store some information (back up files and OS)

I would check that the disks you have are definately recovery disks before you try and remove the SERVICE001 partition

You can only remove the service001 partition while in SAFE mode

[pilotbob]

Quick Status Update.

 

I've managed to clone the drive successfully using "Clonezilla" and now have the 2 original partitions plus a 3rd one (J:) of 317GB. System is all working fine. Can I now combine the C: and J; partitions into one larger C: partition without losing all the files on C: ???

[pilotbob]

Update 2.

 

Success :)

 

Using "Acronis Disk Director" I managed to combine the C: and J: partitions into one larger C: partition which is now showing as 459GB in windows. Brilliant!

Easy this IT stuff init ;)