HD Fooked and Seasons Greetings :)

[Saxif]

Hmm, maybe I'll do that, when I rebooted the pc it did show up as having 2 drives and asked what I wanted to boot from.  If I do that will it be a problem replugging the cable as my Samsung currently has a partition using letter C, will it be auto shifted, will I need to re-assign or will that partition magically disapear?

Sax.

edit : How do you create partitions with Vista, can you do it as you load Vista up, or is there another way of doing it?

[eKo]

Once you replug the cable after installing Vista it should change the drive letter of the old partitions automatically.

And you can create partitions during Vista's installation, can't really remember how it's done, but it's pretty self-explanatory iirc.

[Saxif]

Do you know anything about Acronis True Image?  It seems to be the answer as it says you can copy everything across from 1 HD to another including OS.  I installed Vista last night with the plug out, plug in trick, however remaking the entire software bundle is a daunting task and cut and paste doesn't seem to do it.  Being able to import everything from the old HD to the new, drivers, games dl, photo's blah would be easier tbh.

Sax.

[Cernos]

I've never used anything like True Image but wouldn't it need you to boot into the old (Samsung) version of Windows in order to build the image? After this you would be able to grab things from this image to install into your new (WD) version. Personally I think this could get really messy. Yes it's a chore to have to reinstall stuff, but in the long run this is the best thing as you'll have a nice clean install without problems.

Anything that doesn't have a registry entry (photos, music, documents etc) you can just copy from your old drive to the new via drag and drop. Applications you usually can't copy across like this as they tend to have registry entries and some sprawl into multiple locations (due to bad design). Worth a try but don't expect too many to work. Games vary. Some you can't just copy across, some you can (WoW being one of those, as it's all self-contained neatly in your WoW folder).

[Saxif]

The thought of going through and grabbing drivers, programmes e.t.c is very upsetting.  It does nothing to make me feel better that I'll have a fresh instal cos I haven't had time to mess up my old one, tbh might give it ago and hope for the best.  It'll prolly only take an hour to do max and if it works magic, if it doesn't then I can get depressed and go through the chore of doing it properly, at least I can still boot from my old HD so I can dl all the newest drivers that I need.

Ed.

[Lasiien]

From what i know of imaging software and heard about at work your idea should work ok Sax, i think you get a boot disk utility with something like true image so you wouldn't need to access it from windows. Though im not 100% certain as never used it myself.

[Saxif]

Well, I am gonna do it tonight or tomorrow so I'll let you know how it goes

Sax.

[Saxif]

Well I did it, just finished.  Took about 3-4 hours but I was learning as I went and watching a film and reading e.t.c as there are some bits that take time.  I have disconnected my Samsung HD and am running off the WD now, so its not a false start

I have however found 1 problem, I can't atm use Word/Excel and the entire package because (Iassume) I have a different user name on my Samsung Drive, so now it thinks I am someone else, but I can use the disks to sort that out.  I'll update if I find any other problems as I go.  It was very easy, I sort of skip read some instructions and just had a go, as a semi literate pc person I did ok, so am sure you folks would also have no problems

I know Dead Space works, so am gonna try WoW now and see if I can get that up and running, then prolly goto bed ;p

Sax.

edit - WoW works, all the shortcuts r fooked but going to the game and selecting launcher or .exe does the trick