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I currently have a WD 20.5 gig as master. I am planning on getting the WD 40 gig to replace it. Here are my questions.

I currently have the 20.5 gig split into two partitions, first partition at 4 gigs (with Windows XP Pro on it) and the other partition taking up the rest of the space.

I want to copy over all the stuff in both partitions to the new 40 gig but don't know how to do it. I have used the Western Digital Lifeguard program before to copy over a HDD with a single partition to a new HDD (which has always worked great) but never have copied over a HDD with two partitions over to a new HDD so I am kind of lost.

I would really like to set up the 40 gig with two partitions like the 20.5 gig was, first partition still at 4 gigs and the rest in the second partition as I have it now (of course the second partition would be bigger in the 40 gig than the 20.5 gig.

Anyway I would really appreciate help on this because I sure don't want to have to install Windows XP Pro (and everything else on the 20.5 gig) to the 40 gig from scratch.

I sure hope this can be done.

Any help appreciated. Thanks

The software that comes with the drive SHOULD do what you want, however it may not give you much control over the size of the destination partitions. Try it and see.

A better choice would be to use Norton Ghost.

Well I just got an email back from Western Digital. Seems their software will not at this time copy Windows 2000 or XP besides the problem of having two partitions.

So with Ghost, how would I copy the two partitions? Would I first have to partition the new HDD? Or will ghost do the whole thing?

When I said copy, I assume I would be imaging the old drive, not copying?

Ghost can copy the entire hard drive, or individual partitions, not just make drive images.

You have a choice of copying the entire drive or copying the individual partitions. In your case you should copy the entire drive.

Since the destination drive is larger, Ghost should prompt you for the size you want to make each copied partition. You don't have to make the copied partitions fill the drive if you want to add another partition later.

The menu in Ghost is very straight forward. Copy->drive->to drive.

I have heard weird things about trying to copy XP because of the activation (I have the corp version)? Have you heard anything about that?

What is the difference between using Ghost to copy the drive over vs imaging it over?

Which is better?

First off if you have the corporate version installed then there's no issue with activation at all.

Secondly, even if you had the Home or Pro version installed, activation would not be a problem if all you were doing was changing the hard drive.

I have never copied an XP partition with Ghost (I rarely copy drives, I usually copy partitions). I have imaged & restored and well as copied XP partitions with no problems using Ghost 7.5 Corporate or Ghost 2002 (earlier versions may not be able to work with XP partitions).

Images are for backing up your partitions (for instance I ALWAYS backup my boot partition before installing any new hardware - saves me a LOT of a hassles if the install goes badly).

There's no point in you making an image in this case. That won't copy the partitions to the new drive (unless you make an image of each partition, then restore each partition to the new drive which is absurdly tedious).

In your case you want to copy the entire drive.

Thanks for the info, it helped a lot.