Swapping a HDD

I tried Google. If like me you can't be bothered looking beyond page 5 of search results, then the answer doesn't exist.

So in the hope that it saves some time for someone, somewhere, as it would have done had I read something like this before I started, I write this guide.

NB: If you don't understand anything, I've pretty much stuck to standard lingo so a Google search should throw up about a million pages explaining whatever it is you don't quite get.

Objective:

To replace a Hard Drive in a standalone PC, with Windows XP as the installed Operating System, preserving all data, settings and installed programs.

What You Need:

NB. There are indeed many ways to skin a cat, this is just the way I did it and what I used.

1. (Obvious) PC or laptop, with soon-to-be-replaced hard drive.

2. (Obvious) New hard drive. (More Obvious) Of same physical size as old hard drive. (Even More Obvious) Of capacity at least equal to the amount of data on the old hard drive.

3. The Windows XP install CD used on the STBR-hard drive. *Note: you can make SP2/SP3 recovery CDs to save some updates time and bandwidth later, Google and ye shall find*

4. External enclosure for both hard drives.

5. Separate PC (or HDD Imaging software or whatever)

Obstacles:

You would think it's simple - do an "xcopy" (this is the old DOS command for effecting a complete copy of all files, directories and subdirectories from one floppy to another) of the old hard drive onto the new. But there are two problems:

a) some system files are locked by the O/S from access and so cannot be copied;

b) there is a hard drive "driver" which extremely likely will not work unless old and new hard drives are identical. There may be a way to uninstall it and replace with a generic driver before copying (Google if interested) but to be honest I thought a partial reinstall wouldn't hurt to clear some of the crap that Windoze accumulates over time anyway.

Procedure:

1. Format new hard drive.

To effect this;

a) put the old hard drive into the external enclosure, plug into a computer. Go to Start Menu -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Administrative Services -> Computer Management. A box will appear titled "Computer Management".

b) select "Disk Management" from the list on the left. It is under the "Storage" entry so you may have to expand it.

c) you will see an entry that is marked "Healthy (System)". This is the old hard drive. You should also see an entry "Unallocated". Right-click this and select Format.

d) I did a Full Format. I don't know what would have been different had I selected 'quick format' but I didn't mind waiting half an hour for it to be done.

NB. DO NOT assign a drive letter as there is no need to and just saves you un-assigning it later.

2. Copy Entire contents of Old hard drive onto New hard drive.

a) Fully Shut Down computer (not hibernate/S3). Remove old hard drive from computer, put in external case and plug into separate computer. Unless you have fancy non-standard settings, it will show up in Windows Explorer as "Removable Disk" and then an unassigned drive letter - for example, if your primary HDD on this PC is C:, and a DVD drive is D:, this will show up as E:. (It showed up as I: for me: three partitions on primary HDD - C:, D: & H:, two DVD-RW drives E: & F:, card reader on printer as G:)

b) Copy all data onto the hard drive of the other computer. For saving a bit of time, and just making it easier to see what's going on, I recommend saving the data as a lowly-compressed multi-part archive (I used a 'Fast' compressed 7-Zip archive set to CD-size 650MB parts - this perhaps ended up saving me a heap of time on step d). A simple folder-shift will work but will be slower when copying back onto the new hard drive. Higher compression settings can be used if free hard drive space is an issue. Ultra 7-Zip may compress beyond 50% depending on the nature of your data, but will take forever zipping hundreds of gigabytes even on an e-peen PC.

• HOWEVER* Do Not attempt to copy the "Recycler" and "System Volume Information" directories. My past experiences of bad things happenning when trying to do this led me to not even try to attempt to do it. "Documents and Settings", "Windows" and "Program Files" folders are essential so make sure as any above-newbie PC user would, the pesky "Protect OS Files" option in Windows is disabled.

c) disconnect external enclosure and swap the old hard drive with the new. It will show up in Windows Explorer as the same "Removeable Disk (X:)" as before, but will be completely blank.

d) Shift all the data from step b) onto the new hard drive. This step took less than half the time of b), and I doubt the new hard drive's increased speed accounts for that, so I must assume that zipping the data saved me some time here. For me this consisted of a right-click "7-Zip->Extract To..." "I:" which was nice and simple.

e) Disconnect enclosure.

3. Fix Windows

a) Due to the obstables outlined above, the Windows Install needs to be repaired. To do this, simply install the new hard drive, *making sure the drive letter was not officially assigned at any point*, and at the startup screen push whatever key/s you need to in order to go to the Boot Menu (For me it was F12). Select the "CD/DVD" or "Optical Drive" or whatever option that corresponds to the CD drive with your Windows XP CD in there.

b) Wait for Windows Setup to start. This is the only time when a Blue Screen does not mean Death but is still a BSOD - this is the Blue Screen of Delay because it takes aaaaggggeesssss. Eventually you will get to a screen that shows you options like "To install Windows press ENTER" "To go to Windows Recovery Console press X" and whatever else. You want to press ENTER not go to the Recovery console.

c) The setup will then proceed to take forever (but less forever than before) to search your drive for installations. It should find one in exactly the same folder as it was in on the old hard drive, of course since you copied its entire contents onto the new one. Press "R" to restore that installation.

d) This bit takes forever-forever. Blue-Screen-of-DOS Windows Setup (no fancy graphics) will proceed to "Copy Files". It will restart your computer and then proceed to take ages to copy more files. However you cannot leave this totally alone since at some point you are guaranteed to need to select a Language and Keyboard setup as Setup doesn't have the smarts to copy the old ones from your old install. You may also need to press "Continue" on the non-Microsoft-certified-driver-warning box (as I did for my hacked Display Drivers, and Bluetooth Audio drivers"), so by all means do something else but check back every now and then to make sure Setup isn't wasting time waiting for your mouse clicks.

• It may need you to specify the locations of some drivers if you have cleaned up install file locations and the like. I recommend having all drivers you may need unzipped and ready to be located should this happen. It will save you many URIR routines (uninstall-reboot-install-reboot) if you do it here, otherwise you will get all the standard drivers that come with XP (like 640x480x16 VGA drivers).

e) Windows Setup will eventually finish, and reboot once again. Maybe it will need you to hit some more "Next" buttons after asking some simple questions, to do with Auto Updates and such. Hopefully then for you into your old background with your old icons like me. And a whole lot of Windows Updates to come. I seriously recommend not running anything until these are all done.

Success!!

Exact Details of What I Used:

Laptop: Dell Vostro 1500.

Old Hard Drive: 2.5" SATA 160Gb Toshiba 5400rpm. Over 90% full (<10Gb free).

New Hard Drive: 2.5" SATA 320Gb Samsung 5400rpm ($108 from MSY, Jan 09)

2.5" Enclosure: yumcha SATA enclosure ($33 from MSY, Jan 09)

Other PC: AMD X2 4400+ (2x2.3GHz), 4Gb DDR2-667 (4x1Gb), 320Gb hard drive with about 70Gb free.

Because lappy is only 15 months old, XP install CD came with SP2. I would recommend at least using a recovery CD with at least SP2 if your original XP CD is SP1 or even unpatched (shudder).

Originally, I had to drill two screws out of the base of the laptop to get the old hard drive out. WHY OH MF-ING WHY they cement each and every screw in... I was able to get all but two of the screws out (I disassembled the whole thing and de-dusted fans etc at the same time) and Murphy's Law of course dictates they had to be two of the four hard drive screws. Anyway a 1/8" cheapo drill bit with the drill on high-speed got through the head of the screw easily but I took it slowly. A wood drill bit was good enough because they're only soft metal screws (as evidenced by the fact that the cement sticking them in held where the groove on the top of the screw was shredded by the screwdriver).

I had to shift data in 2 lots. Could have used higher 7z compression but CBF, prolly wouldnt have saved any time in the end anyway because more compression = more CPU time. Copying data took about 3 hours all up. I didn't copy "hiberfil.sys" or "pagefile.sys" in C:\ because BIOS and Windoze respectively will create these themselves, no need to copy 6Gb worth of zeroes anyway. Windows Reinstall took about another 3 hours all up. The only issue I had through the whole process was Daemon Tools giving an error message on the new install: 'DT requires Windows 2000 with blahderyblah version whatsit'... I suppose this goes away when fully updated but don't really care as I use Alcohol 120% by default anyway.

(That was the 2nd time round because the 1st time I had tried to copy data from the laptop onto the new HDD and forgot to unmount the drive letter. So, when all was done and reinstalled, I ended up with a brand new J: drive on the laptop. I didn't need to find out how many programs would crap out because they couldn't find C: anymore, I started again right away.)

I know it worked because I write this from the laptop with the new hard drive in the HDD bay.

---

If anyone wants to edit or delete anything here feel free. It's a wiki, if I wanted to retain any rights related to this I wouldn't have put it here would I.

Bennyg 21 Jan 09.

"The price of democracy is that stupid people can vote, say what they want, and procreate at will." - Becker