Can I move Windows from one hard drive to another?

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An option not considered before the switch would have been to 'Ghost' the image of your small disk onto your new larger disk. Then physically switch your big drive to the the active boot disk and wipe the small drive (and use it for your page file).

i'm just a mom with a laptop that has a c and d drive. the c drive is full and the d drive is empty. is there any way to move stuff over without screwing up my machine. i am waiting for a liver transplant and bedridden most of the time, so this machine is my life line.
i have a nice dvd copy program but i can't run it because it says there is not enough free space on the disk, yet the other one is empty. :0
thanks. i love you computer nerds. i am learning all the time.... xo

I have run into the same situation (basically). I am upgrading from a small primary hard drive with a large secondary which has become full. Now I need to transfer the operating system Windows 98 to a larger hard drive to use as the primary and not loose all of the files that are currently on the "C" drive (Primary). I can remove the drive from the secondary and install my new large drive but now how do you transfer operating system to the new drive so I can scrap the old hard drive then reinstall my old large drive with all of my working files?

I have similar issue as above comments and have read them.

Have a question? Re: "'Ghost' the image of your small disk onto your new larger disk. Then physically switch your big drive to the the active boot disk and wipe the small drive (and use it for your page file).
HOW TO PERFORM THIS "GHOST" FUNCTION?

Thank You.

All major hard drive manufacturers (Maxtor, Seagate, Western Digital, etc.)provide a free download program at their website to move all content (programs and files) from one hard drive to another. Check the make of HDD you have and download from the appropriate mfgr.
I used DiscWizard from Seagate to transfer everything from Maxtor 20Gb to Seagate 120Gb, partition C, 50Gb.

I have a similar issue. Recently upgraded to 80 gig the tech partitioned to C and D drives making C smaller Now everything I install will not allow me to add it to D so it is all on C Is there a way WITHOUT reformatting or losing what I have installed already to make C bigger and leaving D smaller.
I prefer a free program is possible or one with a trial as I can not really afford to buy more after spending that 220 I just spent
THANKS for any help anyone can provide
It is a Samsung Hard drive if that helps by the way The machine is running XP with SP1 have not added SP2 yet as I hate to keep adding If in the end a reformatting is what will have to happen
THANKS
April

Not a single piece of advice placed here works! I used Seagate software to Ghost, and physically swapped drives, and it DOESN'T work because the WINDOWS dir is in use while backing up. You must first remove your C: and copy to a different hard drive on a second PC.

Also it seems like nobody here understands the need to copy an operating system. Ghosting takes half hour, reinstalling everything from scratch may take 20 hours. At $50/hr that's a big reason - that is if the user values his time in any way. Obviously nobody does on this page.

Yes, you can.
Use Norton Ghost 9.0

I had the exact same problem (1 disk, 2 partitions, the system primary partition, drive C was nearly full). I moved the pagefile.sys out to the larger drive D. You need to use Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance. Click on Settings, then on the Advanced Tab. Click on the Change button at the bottom. Select No paging file on C:, select the larger drive and recreate the paging file with 574MB or more. That gave me plenty of room for now.

lol im 12 so bear with me...Ive got two drives c: and D: my D has 1 gig..lol and my c 26...my d is my home drive and it has no space left. everytime i try to install to c instead of D it tells me tht C is full and its has 10 gig left.can anyone help me

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