Can you copy and paste windows to another hard drive?

Question

I currently have 3 Hard drives and the smallest one is the one i have my windows vista os on it. It is an 80 GB and i have a friend that needs one for a computer he is building. Can i copy and paste the entire hard drive over to my almost empty 300gb and boot from it?

Answer 1

The answer is no for Windows NT, 2000, XP and Vista, because there are not only hidden files, but boot-record settings that cannot be simply copied.

However, the good news is that you can Image (aka, "Clone") your drive and load it on to another drive. This copies the entire drive and exactly duplicates it on another drive.

Unfortunately, you have to make a decision on how bad you want to do this, as the simpler Image programs cost quite a bit of money for something that most of us rarely do. I haven't done it in about two years, but I used Acronis TrueImage at the time. Norton Ghost is probably most well-known.  I used a freeware app (I forget the name) to do a non-destructive resize of the partition on the newer, larger drive after I loaded the image to it.

So if you want to buy a program, look for one that supports your OS, can Image it, and resize the partitions on the destination drive after the data's been copied over (typical resizers will destroy the data already on that drive).

Also another hint: you can really make it easy on yourself if you can run both hard-drives on the PC at the same time. Also, don't forget to set the new drive temporarily to "slave". After you complete the process, reset the jumper back to "master" or "cable select".

Lastly, after you're sure that the new drive is working properly, don't forget to use File Shredder or similar software to clean the old 80 GB drive to protect your personal info.

If you're moderately experienced or greater, this is pretty easy to do, but may seem daunting to the beginner. Make sure that you follow the directions and don't rush it; I'd hate to see you lose any data.

Answer 2

no u cant