hard drive issues...help me?!?

Question

I need to copy my hard drive, but i want to know if the one i copy will still work properly after i copy it...

OMG! Thank you all soooooo much, I just need to know if, once i copy the hard drive, ill be able to use the other one if the need arises (such as the failure of the new one). So will the OS be intact and usable, as well as files. (i am a complete moron when it comes to this) :p

Answer 1

The free DOS way:
be sure the drive you've installed in the slave position as Drive D, has a primary partition and is formatted.

You will need to format a used drive by opening My Computer, right click Drive D, select Format > Full and select Display summary and Copy System Files.

When your drive to be copied to is formatted, close all open programs and go to Start > Run type XCOPY C:\*.* D:\ /c/h/e/k/r, click OK.

A DOS window will open to your desktop and when you are queried about overwriting, simply answer "yes" each time.

You are instructing the computer to copy all the files (*.*) from your filled hard drive called C to the your newly formatted hard drive called D. While copying, your added instructions (/c/h/e/k/r), that are called "switches", instruct the computer to copy attributes, read-only files, all sub-directories, hidden files, system files and to ignore errors.

When you've finished copying your drive over to a new drive, shut down your system. Place your newly created drive in the C position, re-position the driver jumpers to "master". You can now opt to store your source drive, re-use it elsewhere, or change the jumpers to the "slave" position, format it and install it as your new, fresh drive D to add extra hard drive space to your computer system.

The way to to it via software:
http://www.powerquest.com/drivecopy/index.html

Answer 2

Don't cut it, just copy it....then see if it works right and if not, you still have the copys on the org drive. Get it?

Answer 3

yes sure