PC help: Copying a hard disk

Q I want to make a copy of the files on my hard disk so I can move them to a new hard disk as I was running out of space. I don’t have the Windows disk so cannot reinstall that way.
David Bossart

A In this situation the File and Settings Transfer Wizard is not enough because it cannot copy Windows and the software installed on the computer.

We would recommend buying VCom Partition Commander Professional 10. It costs £30, but was able to copy a 20GB disk onto an 80GB disk in just 20 minutes.

Any job involving this kind of software should be attempted only after making a full backup of your crucial files. It is better safe than sorry.

Partition Commander does not have to be installed in Windows as the CD is bootable. Before installing the new disk, make sure that your computer is set to boot from the CD.

The simplest way to do this is to restart the computer with the Partition Commander disc in the drive. If the Partition Command menu appears rather than Windows, select VCom Linux in the first menu. If this menu does not appear, you will need to adjust the settings in the computer BIOS to allow booting from a CD.

Select Partitioning Operations from the top of the menu using the up and down arrow keys and press enter. The software will load and show a screen much like the Disk Management screen in Windows.

Left-click on the existing Windows partition, most likely Drive 0 at the top of the screen.

Left-click on the Hard disk menu and select copy hard disk. Make sure that Drive One is selected as the destination disk, select Resize proportionally and move the slide all the way to the right.

This takes advantage of the larger size of the new hard disk.

Tick the Enable SID changing after disk copy option. Click on OK to confirm the settings and then Ctrl and A together to apply the changes.

Click on Yes to confirm that you want the changes to be made. The hard disk will be copied to the new disk. The old disk can now be removed.

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