How to Clone IDE Hard Drive to New SATA Drive With XP

If you are replacing your Hard Drive cloning the old drive can offer an easy way to transfer all your data, programs and settings without the hassle of a reinstall. Since disk cloning is such a useful capability for large enterprises, it is unusual to find free utilities for the operation--but they do exist. Miray's HDClone is a popular free disk cloning utility. This guide will walk you through cloning an old drive to a new one. The process is the same whether the drives are IDE, SATA, or both.



Instructions:

1. 
   

   Start your computer and enter BIOS immediately. If your BIOS has an option to run your SATA drive in IDE mode, enable it. Save and exit your BIOS.

2. 
   

   Download the free edition of Miray HDClone from the link in the "Resources" section below. Right click on the Hdclone20fe file you just downloaded, then click "Extract All Files." This will create a new folder called "Hdclone20fe."

3. 
   

   Open the Hdclone20fe folder, and double-click "Install." Insert your blank floppy disk into the drive, and hit "Start Installation" to create a boot disk. Alternately, use your CD burning software to copy the contents of "hdclone.img" to a CD and create a boot CD.

4. 
   

   Reboot your computer with the floppy or CD in the drive to boot from the hdcopy media. If your computer starts Windows instead, enter your BIOS and set your boot order so that your floppy or CD drive has priority over your hard drive.

5. 
   

   Select the "Source" and "Target" drives. Double-check which is which choosing the wrong one will erase all your data. If the target drive has any information on it, hdclone will ask you for confirmation to continue.

6. 
   

   Begin the cloning process. It is normal for this to take a long time, even several hours for large drives.