Replace the Boot Drive on a PC Using Norton Ghost

Use Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image, or other disk imaging software that will copy byte for byte everything on your current hard drive to another hard drive without losing anything, including the OS. Some Retail boxed disks come with a bootable CD that can copy data from an old disk to a new one. These usually have very good instructions with pictures.

Steps

  1. Buy what you need: the new hard drive, floppies, and the imaging software of your choice (I am familiar with Norton Ghost, and will be discussing the steps with this software).
  2. Insert the disk titled Norton Ghost 2003. This will give you the ability to create a bootable floppy disk to run ghost on. In creating this disk, the default values are just fine.
  3. Make sure the jumper setting for the current hard drive is set to Master. Set the new hard drive jumper setting to Slave.
  4. Insert the floppy disk into your floppy drive and turn off the computer (don't just log off).
  5. Plug in the new hard drive by plugging the slave channel (spare connection of the gray IDE cable) into the IDE connection of the hard drive, and the molex power connector from the power supply (white with four plugs) into the molex connection of the hard drive. It isn't necessary, but I recommended that you screw in the new hard drive in a temporary location. If this isn't possible, just make sure the bottom of the hard drive doesn't touch any metal.
  6. Turn on the computer, and if you already have your computer's boot priority set to floppy before HDD then you're fine. If not, you need to change this to make sure the computer boots to the floppy.
  7. Norton Ghost will automatically start, and ask that you make the connected drives ghost drives. Then you will have the option to copy from disk to disk, or partition to partition. You want disk to disk.
  8. Knowing the capacity of each drive, you will choose the smaller drive as the source drive (the drive that the information will be taken from), then you will choose the destination drive (the drive that the information will be written to). Once these are chosen, you will have a warning about the destination drive being written over -- click OK.
  9. After the process is finished, you should choose quit from the menu, remove the diskette, and turn off your computer.
  10. Unplug both hard drives, switch the jumper on the new hard drive from slave to master, then hook up the new hard drive exactly as the old hard drive was hooked up. Don't put the drive(s) into the computer case until you've verified that the system boots as you expect. (Presuming you have room to do this project, just connect the IDE and power cables to the drive next to the drive bay.)
  11. You will now boot right into Windows (don't forget to plug in the power cord at the back of your computer) with all of your data intact, programs installed, but now with a larger capacity. After you've confirmed that everything works as expected, turn the computer off, unplug the power cord, secure the hard drive in the case, replace the cover, side panel, whatever, plug the power cord in again and you're done.

Tips

  • The jumper settings are usually laid out on a diagram on the hard drive itself. You will notice between the IDE connection and the molex connection there are 9 pins, and there may or may not be a plastic piece stuck in there. This holds a piece of metal (called a jumper) that connects 2 pins that tells the drive what it is, a master or slave. If there is no diagram, consult the manual for the drive, or search online.
  • You do not have to format the new hard drive. Norton Ghost will take care of that. Actually, if the destination drive is to become the new boot drive and you are using Ghost 12.0, don't even partition the drive. Also, don't forget to check "Resize drive to fill unallocated space" option.
  • Most PC's made since 2000 have UDMA 66/100/133 drives and 80 wire cables. With these cables you can set the disks jumper to CS or Cable Select, which makes the disk at the end of the cable the master and the disk in the middle the slave. If you switch the disks the roles switch.
  • In mouseless navigation the tab order is odd when doing save to image or restore from image. The tab order is: Folder, File, Comment, Ok, Cancel, Favorite (doesn't work), Up (doesn't work), Drive Selection.

Warnings

  • Make sure your computer is turned off when you plug or unplug any hardware. To make it more safe, unplug the power plug from the back of your computer.
  • While this suggestion seems to have merit, you do want to consider the fact that if you remove the power plug from your computer you no longer have a path to ground. I do however suggest that you turn off the power before changing any electrical connections on drives, etc.

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