[stonetemplepilot]

hello all,
So I built this computer the other day, but I din't have a hard drive so I was forced to use an old 20 gig IDE deal. basically, what i want to do is buy another drive and copy my entire OS onto it without having to reinstall windows.
How do i go about doing so? if the disk is formatted @ 20gb will i be able to use a larger drive?
secondly, will windows XP run on a SATA drive without problems? the chipset drivers are installed and it sees the Intel serial ATA controller.

[pip22]

Use disk cloning software to copy existing drive's contents (including hidden boot code) on to a larger drive.
You will have to fit the new, empty drive into an internal bay if possible, or into an external enclosure which connects to a USB port.

"if the disk is formatted @ 20gb will i be able to use a larger drive?"
No problem, the cloning software can "expand" the 20GB partition as required to fill a larger space.

"will windows XP run on a SATA drive without problems?"

Since you aren't actually installing XP from scratch on to the SATA drive, and you say the SATA drivers are already installed, that should not be an issue.

Software to use (my recommendation): Active@ Disk Image http://www.disk-image.net/

[rosiesdad]

The big name hard drive companies each have a cloning program (its acronis true image), just google (Western Digital, the other one is Seagate) for it. As long as ONE of the drives is the same brand as the branded software it will work fine.

[stonetemplepilot]

ok, so does the disk clonner work as a boot disk or do i launch it from windows?
also, when i buy the new HD do i have to format it first or no?

[rosiesdad]

The disk cloners are a program launched in Windows, so put it on your old hard drive. Get the new HD, and of course it needs to be formatted, (pretty sure there is a utility in the cloner to do that) then clone it.
Slick as a whistle. It will be a direct copy of your old drive, and boot fully.
Suggest you do a disk clean up, and defrag. No sense cloning without doing that.

I see your switching from IDE to SATA, you arent switching computers are you? that wont work. Cloning only works on same computer.

[stonetemplepilot]

no, same board.
i just need to replace the 20 gig with something bigger.
i also need to know if there is a size limitation with this particular NT system? i'm aiming at a 250 but idk if that will work

[rosiesdad]

Should work, unless you go over 1TB.

Not sure about SATA drivers for the new hard drive though. My computer dont need special SATA drivers, it runs in a compatibility mode (DELL).

Some MOBO's need a special SATA driver. Pretty sure the cloning wont be affected by lack of driver, just may be an issue of getting it to boot.
If your MOBO has sata ports, use SATA though, its a faster read/write than IDE.