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Some folks like to upgrade their computers from time to time for more speed and response time. There is several ways to do this, more memory or faster memory, faster processors, or newer and faster motherboards due to the latest chipset and graphics technology. These are all great ways to upgrade your computer. Often the hard drive is overlooked in an upgrade. Replacing a hard drive with a much faster hard drive and with more cache gives you a very noticeable difference in response time and the speed in which applications open and close. A faster hard drive also shortens boot times. This short tutorial is about replacing a hard drive using a program called "NORTON GHOST".
When you go out and buy a new replacement hard drive, it sometimes has software included. The Western Digital comes with a program called “Data Lifeguard”, Maxtor comes with “Max Blast” etc. These programs work fine but it is my opinion that Ghost works much better.
One of the main reasons that I like and use Ghost is that it is so much faster. The software that is included with new hard drives is improving but they are still very slow compared to Ghost.
There are many reasons that the speed of these programs is so important to me. Over a longer period of time, while important operating system files are being transferred to the new drive there’s more room for error. A power failure or a simple bump of the keyboard can cause big problems. Some of these programs can take hours for a simple transfer depending on the amount a data being transferred.
The 2 IDE drives that I’m using for this demonstration are the same size, (80gb) which actually is a little less than 80gb. The source drive is multi-boot with several different Windows operating systems on it. The destination drive is not formatted; it’s just an empty, like new hard drive.
I’m using a Norton Ghost 2003 boot diskette. You don’t actually need the whole program to do this although if you do have the whole program, you can use it to create the Ghost boot diskette I will be using for this demonstration.
If you don’t have Norton Ghost, you can download This File to create the boot diskette that you can use.
Ok, let’s get started.
Assuming you have already created the Norton Ghost diskette, you will have to install the new hard drive with the jumpers configured this way: The old drive set to master and the new drive set as the slave. This procedure will also work with the new drive set as the master and the old drive set to slave but in this demonstration the new drive will be the slave and the old drive the master. It’s also important to place the master drive on the end connector and the slave on the middle connector on the flat IDE cable.
The boot sequence in the bios needs to have the floppy drive before the hard drive which in most cases will already be set that way. If the computer boots while a boot diskette is inserted in the drive that usually means the boot sequence has to be changed in the bios.
Once the drives are installed and the Norton Ghost boot diskette is inserted, press the power button, shortly after that you will hear the floppy drive working and you will see, entering PC Dos on your screen. It will stop at this window:
Just click ok, then this window will appear:
Put your mouse arrow on “Local” -> “Disk” -> “To Disk” and click, which will bring up this window:
You will have to select the source drive here but if the destination drive is empty or new Ghost won’t give you a choice. Click ok and the next window will appear:
In this window, you will be selecting the destination drive. Click ok and the next window will be a summary of the data being copied to the destination drive:
Click yes to confirm that you’re aware of Ghost overwriting the destination drive.
The transfer of files will start:
The transfer is almost complete at the 21 minute mark:
Once completed, you will see this window, ignore it and read on:
THIS IS IMPORTANT…. Ignore this window and force a shutdown by holding the power button down till the computer shuts down. (You don’t want the computer to restart and assign new drive letters for the new drive while the old drive is still installed.)
Once the computer is shut down, remove the boot diskette, remove the old hard drive and configure the new hard drive’s jumpers as the single master. Mount the new hard drive and your ready to boot your computer.
