Hard disk upgrade

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One of my computers needed an larger hard disk. It had WinXP installed and I did not want to reinstall it (and the many other applications that it had installed). But on the other hand I wanted to have a larger C: drive.

I have used Symantec Ghost in the past and it does the job quite nicely. However I wanted to do this using free software, as I was not sure if the Ghost version I got was NTFS compatible and I did not want to buy a new one.

Googling a bit will lead me to HDClone 3.1 of which there is a free version. This program clones your old harddisk content to the new one, keeping the partitioning scheme intact. You can create a bootable CD-ROM with the software so you can use it with systems without a floppy disk (alternatively you can boot from a floppy disk too). The program does a great job with a nice graphical interface.

Once I was done with the cloning I used another shareware program called Boot it. It's main goal is to act as a boot manager, enabling you to have up to 200 primary partitions, but it can also resize different partition types, NTFS among them. The software allows you to create a boot floppy (or CD-ROM) to start the software from. It has a nice graphical interface that shows your current partitions and allows you to resize them. It took my old windows partition and it sucessfully enlarged it to fit the whole disk size.

Comments

Hiroshi Ikeda said…
These articles are too interesting. Over the top, the 3D system and hard disk clonning using free software. Nice!!
9:24 am
misan said…
I really hope they are not "too interesting" :-)
10:35 am
Hiroshi Ikeda said…
I think it's too interesting. Just take a look to Cluster maps, ;). Other fact is that any comment can improve the article.
9:13 am
misan said…
I do welcome comments indeed. And sometimes I do learn something too. This time I can see that the word "too" has many uses:

1. In addition; also: He's coming along too.
2. More than enough; excessively: She worries too much.
3. To a regrettable degree: My error was all too apparent.
4. Very; extremely; immensely: He's only too willing to be of service.
5. Informal. Indeed; so: You will too do it!

So while my response was assuming the meaning was #2 I can see that meaning #4 fits what you meant (I hope). At any rate my answer was due to this missunderstanding.
7:29 pm
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