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New Hard drive; copy from old hard drive?


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Old 01-01-2017, 18:43
AFC69
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Hi, my 80Gig IDE hard drive is almost full, so I've bought a new SATA hard drive, so could theoratically run the two of them together, but would prefer to have just the one new drive. The old drive has Windows 10 on it.

To save having to re-install all my software etc etc on the new drive, what are my options; do as I mentioned above and run the two drives, booting off the old drive, or can I somehow copy all my old files over and then boot off the new drive, and disconnect the old drive?

Thanks in advance
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Old 01-01-2017, 19:02
chrisjr
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I assume you have confirmed that the PC has SATA connections onboard so can accommodate a new drive?

You will need some sort of disk cloning software to copy the old drive to the new one. For example Macrium Reflect Free

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

This produces an exact copy of the old drive which should be bootable. Simply bunging both drives in the PC and using Windows File Explorer to copy stuff between disks won't work.
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Old 01-01-2017, 19:50
AFC69
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I assume you have confirmed that the PC has SATA connections onboard so can accommodate a new drive?

You will need some sort of disk cloning software to copy the old drive to the new one. For example Macrium Reflect Free

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

This produces an exact copy of the old drive which should be bootable. Simply bunging both drives in the PC and using Windows File Explorer to copy stuff between disks won't work.
Thanks Chris, and yeah, my PC motherboard can take the SATA hard drive
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Old 01-01-2017, 21:05
Big_Kahuna
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Instead of cloning the drive, I would leave Windows 10 on the old drive and move everything else onto the new drive ie My Documents, My Music etc. In WIndows 10 you can tell it which drive to save your files on to.
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Old 01-01-2017, 21:08
Loobster
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I absolutely would NOT leave the OS on the old drive. If it's IDE, that means it's maybe 8 years old or more, and probably doesn't have long left. Plus it's small, and no doubt way slower than a modern SATA drive.
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Old 02-01-2017, 13:19
Alan F
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If you merely clone the old disk to the new you will also copy across all the errors and rubbish software that is present on the old disk.

Much better to simply install Windows 10 and all the software that you really want onto the new disk. Then copy across the user*files that you wish to retain.*
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Old 03-01-2017, 10:18
noise747
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If you merely clone the old disk to the new you will also copy across all the errors and rubbish software that is present on the old disk.

Much better to simply install Windows 10 and all the software that you really want onto the new disk. Then copy across the user*files that you wish to retain.*
I kind of agree with this, cloning is ok if you are sure the drive that is being cloned from is fine, but yes a fresh install is better, get everything the way you want it and then use reflect to make an image of it on an external drive.
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Old 03-01-2017, 16:25
Big_Kahuna
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If you merely clone the old disk to the new you will also copy across all the errors and rubbish software that is present on the old disk.

Much better to simply install Windows 10 and all the software that you really want onto the new disk. Then copy across the user*files that you wish to retain.*
This sounds alot better than my previous post. I stand corrected
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Old 03-01-2017, 18:37
noise747
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This sounds alot better than my previous post. I stand corrected
The minor problem with starting afresh is installing the software, depending on what you have got it can take a while. If you got software like Photoshop that requires a load of plugins, then that can take ages.
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