Copying Old Hard Drive to New PC

Okay, if I get a new hard drive with a bigger capacity and copy everything from my old hard drive to a new one, my OS will still run like my original one right?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Yes, your OS should run the same, maybe better with the extra space!

I had a compac pressario the the mother board was damaged.So i bought another compac pressario and would like to add my old harddrive as a extra, but when i followed your directions to add a second harddrive i only found 2 sata ports and both were being used. one by the hrddrive and one by the cd-rom there were no others. is there any way else to retrive my old data from the old harddive or to connect it to computer as a second

EDITOR'S NOTE: Connect it as an external drive. See http://askbobrankin.com/convert_internal_hard_drive_to_external.html

Added a Maxtor external HD to keep all videos/itunes/pictures off the internal drive for better performance.How do I go about when downloading new pics/videos/itunes,that it goes directly to the external drive.F:\, and not the internal C:\drive.Maxtor offers a run backup everyday,however,I do not want to back up ,I want to load it directly to the F:/ .Any help greatly appreciated

EDITOR'S NOTE: You can change a setting in iTunes to tell it where the music library shoulkd be stored. For individual downloads, you'll need to change the drive letter when selecting a folder to store the file.

Hello, I have a little problem. My computer crashed (mother board went out). Now I have a second pc with the same operating system. I want to save my data (pictures and other files) from my old hard drive. I installed this hard drive into the other computer as a slave. I can see the hard drive and access all the information but the one folder I have all the things on that I want to save. What can I do??

EDITOR'S NOTE: Are you saying that one specific folder on the old drive cannot be found, or that things are missing from it? If so, you should try a file recovery tool. See http://askbobrankin.com/recover_deleted_files.html

I have vista on my pc a the moment but i want to wipe the hard drive Could i transfer all my programs and files to another hard drive and have a new OS on my new hard drive wil the programs work from my old hard drive as a slave drive?

EDITOR'S NOTE: No, you'll need to re-install those programs from the original media. Blame the Windows registry.

I have just taken my old laptop's hard drive out and placed it into an external enclosure to use with my new laptop, however when I connect it I find that it is very slow and that I can't copy anything off of it onto my new laptop's HD, whenever I try it just starts up saying - 'copying 24 (or however many) items, (however many) minutes remaining and just hangs there making no progress. I tried with just one mp3 file and the same thing happens, I end up having to disconnect the old HD or Windows explorer stops responding, what am I doing wrong?

I replaced my old dell Optiplex for a newest Compaq, but I wan to use the old hard drive in my new computer because i have a lot of programs in it. I just connected the old hard drive to the compaq, but it does not recognize the drive. It does not do anything, it is like nothing conected, the new desktop just wait for any hard drive in a black screen.

I put the hard drive in the old desktop and it is working fine.

Do you know why is it happening?

Do you have any advice on how to transfer all my files (incl. Win Vista) from an old HDD to a new blank one? I've tried Acronis and Windows Easy Transfer but they only make backup /or require my new HDD to have Vista already preinstalled. It is worth noting that my laptop vendor never gave me the OS (which is installed in the old HDD) and I have since lost the recovery disk he gave me.

Are there any freeware software that could help me facilitate said migration? Thanks in advance.

Hi Bob, I have a "lot" of word documents that are on an older Windows 98 desktop that I would like to have use of again . I parked the old computer four years ago and don't know if this or the older older system will be a problem. Didn't find any comments that covered my issue. I have XP professional on my newer system.

EDITOR'S NOTE: You should be able to open the Word documents from the Win98 machine on the XP machine with no problem.

(How to transfer programs from old hd to new)
Just purchased a HP Notebook/laptop. I have XP on my desktop.. Vista is on the Notebook. I own MS Office Word 2007 on the desktop & to activate it on my notebook, I have to buy it. Is there a way to just keep the hard drive and access JUST the old hard drive through my notebook? Has pics and other documents as well on the older HD. Obviously, purchasing the MSOW 2007 again is out of the question, and the info on the one I have I've no idea where it is (unless I can find the key on my old HD). I'm getting rid of the desk top. Thanks so much, Cathie.

EDITOR'S NOTE: You can use the old hard drive as an external drive, connected via USB. See http://askbobrankin.com/convert_internal_hard_drive_to_external.html