I need help copying my operating hard drive to a new one I am going to buy. I have 1 regular Sata II hard drive in my computer. I want to buy a 10,000 rpm raptor to be my operating hard drive and leave my current Sata II drive to store files only. This way my computer will be way faster. I went to best buy and they told me this could not be done. Yet they told me they could do it for me for a fee. Ah, so it can be done, plus I had heard something about this before. I want to completely copy my hard drive to the 10k raptor. One other problem is that I have a Gateway computer and the system restore is in the partion on the hard drive and I do not want to lose that, becuase some people say that these hard drives are harder to copy. Any help is useful. Thank you
As one who went through that experience.... As long as your personal docs are safe and available, put Windows in the new drive, make it the boot drive and reinstall your software, else it will end in tears.
There is a program called "Ghost". I think Symantec makes it (the Norton folks). That's the program a local computer store uses to transfer the contents from your old drive, to a new one that you buy. It's not free. I've never used it, so I don't know how easy it is either.
attar the problem is that these new computers do not come with the windows discs. You can only use that version of windows on that specific computer since the installation files are on a partition in the hard drive. Can I copy that partition as well as the rest of the hard drive? It is a good idea to back up all of my files on DVD discs I guess, and since my computer is fairly new I do not have many programs, mostly games. I just do not want to copy drive and everything gets erased.
I wasn't aware that current practice was to ship the PC with installation files on the HD. I thought that if you do not have an actual Windows CD with the serial, that the PC came with a recovery CD which resets the hard drive to the state that the PC was in at the point of sale -nothing but the OS. It sounds like the suggestion from JVC is a more viable solution than copying the system files.
