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[Frankiek]

As my windows xp hdd is 20 year old I have bought a newer and more capable one to make a mirror image of the old and keep it as reserve in case of sudden failure. I tried to check on the web how to create a seamless copy but find contradictory info.  So I am looking for good tips on how I should proceed
Thank you

[Knochenlutscher]

Waiting for the real IT staff. I'm a Tech Noob too.
My Buddy told me to buy a double decker Icy Box.
One of my externals was reset by Windoof,
and in order to handle various Drives.
Must change Drive D HDD this year to ssd, that's
When I see if it's worth.
Haven't come to test it's mirroring, but as
a plug n load Drive station, it's cool.

I'm confident others are more Experts, will watch this Thread in order to learn myself.

Tobias

[genXgamer]

Been years since I've cloned a hard drive (tens years plus) back when tinkering with PCs was a bit of a hobby.
Should still have the software on one of the many, many drives I have.

[Frankiek]

yes these days they made it close to impossible to tinker with the OS. In XP you can do plenty directly with DOS

[bomberkiller]

Hello Frankie,

I bought Drive Copy 15 Pro many years ago and I am still very satisfied with this software! Why did I buy the software when Drive Copy is also available for free?

With this purchased software (approx. $ 30,-) you can later change partition sizes or names and numbering of the hard disks (HDD's and/or SSD's) without any problems.

Not all of this is easily possible with the free software.

And something else very important: For Drive Copy, no reading is necessary for the function, you can use everything intuitively.

If you make a mistake while working with the software, you will be warned. As already written above, I am very satisfied with Drive Copy!

https://www.paragon-software.com/home/drive-copy/

With best regards

 

Gerhard

[SAS~Storebror]

Ask 5 people and get 10 different directions to proceed

While there's nothing wrong with BK's answer, there's two major issues:

• Drive Copy needs Windows 7 at least
• The software provides additional features going beyond the OP's scope

As a big fan of the KISS principle and "single use, single purpose" software, I'd recommend "MiniTool Partition Wizard for Windows XP" in it's free edition.
The current version of MiniTool Partition Wizard required Windows 7 as well, but you can get the old XP compatible freeware here:
https://allxpsoft.com/minitool-partition-wizard-windows-xp/

The tool is built for doing 1:1 copies "offline" (read: from a boot CD or USB stick created by the software itself), sector by sector, from one HDD to another, where the target HDD can be of any size (same, smaller, larger) as long as it's sufficient to hold the used data from the source HDD.


Mike

[bomberkiller]

What Mike wrote there is correct (with one exception).

When the disk is mirrored, everything is mirrored to the new disk.

Do you really want to continue working with the old WinXP on a larger hard disk? If so, forget my comments on Drive Copy.


Otherwise:

Disconnect your WinXP HDD from the mainboard, connect the new SSD disk to the mainboard.

Flash a current version of Windows onto your new "SSD". Then you first install Drive Copy on the new Windows (10, 11) SSD.

But only if absolutely necessary create a partition (D:) on the new SSD. This partition should be slightly larger than the size of your current WinXP HDD.

Now reconnect your XP-HDD to the mainboard, restart and the old HDD will be recognized as drive E: that's it.

Mirror the "E: - HDD" to your new SSD partition D:.

Your "old XP programs" now start from partition "D:" and depending on the size of your new "SSD" you have a lot of free memory. JOY!

But please consider that the old HDD works very, very slowly compared to the new SSD!

It is better to actually put the old HDD on a shelf forever!

From experience I can tell you that after a short time you will want more memory again.

Why? If you have a lot of disk space, you collect all the old crap. At least that's how it is for me. 

Regards

Gerhard

[Frankiek]

Many thanks for the quick replies (as usual). I actually bought a vintage PATA drive just (i hope) in better conditions than  mine that started failing the "seek" test. Maybe a better choice would have been to use a SATA drive but then I needed to buy a SATA/PATA adapter and creating several partitions to emulate the two HDD current configuration. I will let you know the results

[Frankiek]

The current version of MiniTool Partition Wizard required Windows 7 as well, but you can get the old XP compatible freeware here:
https://allxpsoft.com/minitool-partition-wizard-windows-xp/

Mike

Well I tried but after three redirect and antivirus unsafe website warnings I got to download the windows7 version that is not working n my xp

[genXgamer]

I'll see if I can chase up a couple for you.
I have a big folder with plenty of XP era software/program installers.

[SAS~Storebror]

Well I tried but after three redirect and antivirus unsafe website warnings I got to download the windows7 version that is not working n my xp

I see.
As much as I understand, version 8.1.1 will probably be the last one where we are safe to say that it supports xp.
This D/L link seemed to work for me: https://www.filepuma.com/download/minitool_partition_wizard_free_edition_8.1.1-4197/download/

As for the HDD... I still have two 2TB SATA drives lying around here in "almost mint" condition, one hitachi and one WD red.
SATA-PATA adapters seem to be available on ebay.it for about 20 EUR, SATA PCI controllers start out at 50 EUR.
Whether it's worth it... well, depends. But it could be a "plan B" if your old PATA drive fails.


Mike

[Frankiek]

Thank I will try today I have installed the 250gb PATA drive will reformat and try to make a working clone if this fails we can consider plan B even if I am really keeping my XP to the bare minimum basically just vintage software, old work archives and old games