Upgrade to Bigger HD ... What did I NOT do? (RESOLVED)

[Chim]

As I mentioned on my other topic on the avast Forum, I did TRY to upgrade my HP Pavilion 6730 from its current 10 Gig Seagate Model ST310212A Hard Drive ... to the 400 Gig Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 Hard Drive from my non-working Dell computer.

Last year the brother of an Online friend had told me that my HP Pavilion could only be upgraded to a 40 Gig Hard Drive.  But, earlier this week, someone at Geeks to Go told me that my HP Pavilion COULD be upgraded to that 400 Gig Hard Drive with no problems.  So, I went for it.

I installed the 400 Gig Hard Drive in my HP Pavilion.
I inserted my Windows XP Install CD to have it do its thing.

In various attempts ...
I tried both formatting with the QUICK NTFS method ... and also with the FULL NTFS method.
I tried having the HD Jumper Setting at Cable Select ... and also at Master On.

The 400 Gig Hard Drive WAS recognized and WAS formatted.
The Files WERE loaded / copied.

Yet, no matter what I tried, my computer would NOT Boot Up.
It would just sit there with a Blinking Cursor. 

Is there any preparation that I possibly had to do to that 400 Gig Hard Drive like maybe with some App / Utility from a Floppy BEFORE running my Windows XP Install CD?

Is there any Setting that I am supposed to change in the BIOS?

Anything I forgot to do?  Any insight / suggestions on why my computer didn't Boot Up after presumably installing Windows XP on it?

[Chim]

In the BIOS Setup ...
Is Windows XP considered to be in the category of --- Windows 98 / Win2000?
Or should that be changed to --- OTHER?

I mean, it's been working all this time with the Setting at Windows 98 / Win2000 ... with my 10 Gig HD.
But, I was just curious if with trying to upgrade to that 400 Gig HD, I should change that Setting to OTHER?

[SpeedyPC]

I was told any older BIOS version setup on old computers may not be compatible with larger HD size and any new HD model may not be compatible with older motherboard running the old BIOS software

IF I'm not mistaken that was about 6 years ago

[bob3160]

See if this helps you:
http://www.paragon-software.com/export/sites/paragonsoftware.com/docs/GPT_Loader_CaseStudy.pdf

[DavidR]

In all honesty you should really have asked these questions before starting to transfer to another, larger HDD.

By far the easiest option is using drive imaging software you could have cloned the existing 10GB drive and copied it to the new drive. It would probably have allowed you to resize partitions also.

Your friend may well have been almost correct about 40GB drive; that would have been on FAT32 with a certain cluster size, it could be a max of just 32GB unless the file format uses NTFS http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314463

So doing the investigation first can save a lot of heartache on which way to approach this. I'm not expert I just know how to use search tools and what to ask; but I am pretty familiar with disk imaging software and restoring partitions, so cloning is just a step further

You would have your existing OS, updates, programs, settings, email, bookmarks, etc. etc. instead of having to install everything and apply all of the updates and customisations, etc.

A simple search returns many hits:
http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search?p=clone+XP+drive+to+larger+hard+drive
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_cloning
http://www.ehow.com/how_2246919_clone-hard-drive-windows-xp.html

[Chim]

Well, Bob, in that link they certainly don't waste any time throwing out in the open the possibility of incompatibility between bigger Hard Drives and older Hardware.  True, they sort of refer to the Godzilla-sized Terabytes ones, but no doubt the possibility exists in my situation.

Thanks for the Info.

[Chim]

David, the thought did occur to me to install Macrium Reflect and clone my Hard Drive onto one of my Flash Drives.

So far my experience with Macrium Reflect or ANY HD Cloning App is that I theoretically cloned the Hard Drive on my sister's computer.  I say "theoretically" because I followed the instructions, went through the motions and have the so-called Cloning File in one of my Flash Drives.  But, since I've never messed around with Macrium Reflect or recovering a Hard Drive with ANY Cloning App ... I don't really know that I did everything correctly and that that Cloning File WILL work and recover my sister's computer if need be one day.

IF my HP Pavilion stays working the rest of the day, (It's working right now) I might go ahead and install Macrium Reflect and go through the motions of cloning my Hard Drive just in case I really have recovering my HP Pavilion via Macrium Reflect as my only option ... using the bigger 400 Gig Hard Drive.

[DavidR]

I don't think cloning a 'drive' to a usb stick (no matter how big) is going to work. Part of the cloning process is to mark the actual new drive with the key of the cloned drive OS doesn't see any difference.

[Chim]

So then the Cloning thing HAS to be done only to like an External Drive or a Secondary Drive?
Well that bites.
I guess that rules out cloning in my situation.

[DavidR]

I think that it is a case that you can't exactly replicate what is on the hard disk sectors, mbr, fat table on a USB stick, but I have never tried to do it. Yes you can create a bootable USB and copy/write a .iso image to a USB making it like a CD, but I don't think it can truly replicate a drive.

I don't know if you could do a hard drive image as opposed to clone the drive and save that drive image to the USB. Then use the Macrum boot CD to restore the image on the USB to the new HD, but this really is something you need to address on a more specialist forum, Macrum for instance.

[timcan]

I don't know if you could do a hard drive image as opposed to clone the drive and save that drive image to the USB. Then use the Macrum boot CD to restore the image on the USB to the new HD, but this really is something you need to address on a more specialist forum, Macrum for instance.

Chim, I believe that's your best option to try.I don't see any reason that will not work.Just be sure to set the partition "active"in case Macrium doesn't do it automatically.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-dos.htm Here is an image program that does not require installing if you don't want to install Macrium. It's less than 4 MB and runs totally from a bootable disc. Just download the trial GUI version,it is more user friendly.
Hope this helps.

[Simion]

I don't know if you could do a hard drive image as opposed to clone the drive and save that drive image to the USB. Then use the Macrum boot CD to restore the image on the USB to the new HD, but this really is something you need to address on a more specialist forum, Macrum for instance.

Chim, I believe that's your best option to try.I don't see any reason that will not work.Just be sure to set the partition "active"in case Macrium doesn't do it automatically.

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-dos.htm Here is an image program that does not require installing if you don't want to install Macrium. It's less than 4 MB and runs totally from a bootable disc. Just download the trial GUI version,it is more user friendly.
Hope this helps.

Macrium will do the same thing. I've done it before with Acronis. The CD is nothing more than a linux live disk with a linux version of the imaging software.

http://kb.macrium.com/Search.aspx?Keywords=linux+rescue+disk

Edit: I just noticed at the bottom of the page I linked to are instructions to create a bootable usb device. It might be what you're looking for.

[Chim]

RNfromTN ... David, it's getting a little bit late for me to engage in that Marcrium experiment today.  I have a couple other little projects which I have to work on.

If the computer again works fine tomorrow as it did all day yesterday and has done so, so far today ... I'll try to engage in that Macrium experiment then.  I wouldn't want to rush it right now.

Then once I get that Clone File on my Flash Drive, I won't just up and immediately dive into swapping out with that 400 Gig HD.  I'll wait until IF and when the computer starts behaving badly like it did at the beginning of the week.

Like I said, so far, the computer is working on its 2nd day of behaving fine.  Well, yesterday it finally failed, but very late in the day ... way over at around 7:00PM or so after having worked fine the entire day.

In the meantime, it'll give me a chance to reread the Macrium instructions.

Thanks again, guys!

[Chim]

Ahhh, but that Bootable Flash Drive would be Linux, Simion.  Linux is uncharted territory for me.  I wouldn't know what the frigg to do in a Linux environment.

[DavidR]

Ahhh, but that Bootable Flash Drive would be Linux, Simion.  Linux is uncharted territory for me.  I wouldn't know what the frigg to do in a Linux environment.

You aren't alone there. But many boot CD, etc. use linux and you don't really have to understand linux. Normally the Boot CD, etc. will be set up for a specific purpose and should be some sort of graphical interface to follow, not naked down and dirty command line stuff.