Help installing Hard drive please

[#1]

Hi,
Just a thought do i copy my current hard disk to the new one now and then physically switch them over or do i switch the disks over first and then copy or do i not need to touch the disks and just re-name them when copying complete and lastly does it leave everything on the old hard disk and not delete it just in case the copying should fail..I know these questions are probably pretty naff but then i really havent a clue what i am doing. Like a car i know how to drive it but dont ask me what a turbo is ?

[#2]

One thing to check before you copy it across.
What is the level of fragmentation in your original disk.
I ask because the copy process doesn't move files it copies the disk sector by sector so any fragmentation will be carried over.

[#3]

I will do a defrag before copying
Thanks

[#4]

I don’t have experience of the product suggested so it may work as designed but in the past I have cloned many hard disks with Partition Magic floppy disk sets and while the clone goes just fine when you swap the disk drives over the cloned version of Windows may not start.
If this happens it is because the ID’s of the drive(s) has changed and Windows has changed the cloned drive ‘C:’ to drive ‘D:’ so cannot find any of its files. If this happens do not format your original drive and leave your cloned drive ‘as is’ and get back to me. I will talk you through the steps needed to adjust the registry in your old version of Windows so you can make a new clone that will get the drive letters correct and the clone working.
Regards, P.

[#5]

You get that problem with PM as you are copying the partition and not the drive so the MBR Boot & record dont get copied. If you clone the drive it should work ok.
I gave a url for a free util but there are good one you can buy like Acronis and ghost if you only want to use it once you may be able to get a demon that would work

[#6]

Acronis 10 is brilliant, easy to use plenty of flexibility...
Currently on Amazon UK for £19.97
I have used this for a year or so now for backups and problem solving. I have to say it is worth every penny!
Oh dear I sound a bit of an Acronis fanboy...

[#7]

Hi
The good news is i used Acronis 10 and it is brilliant copied hard disk over without a hitch and pretty fast too.
Bad news is unbeknown to me my daughter downloaded loads of pics to my new hard drive (as we were just using it for data storage) of her baby and as i have been away for a few days didnt think to ask if anyone had put anything more on the disk as i had copied all the files before i went away. yes i know its my fault i should have checked and yes the cloning process has deleted all the contents and yes i am in the dog house and yes she has deleted all the files from her camera .....Just wondered if any of the un delete programmes might resue any of the pics there seem to be alot of packages out there but as this is a cloning just wondered if i would be wasting my time...Many Thanks..Mike
Just a thought can the Compact Flash card be unerased as she has not reused the card yet ?

[#8]

You will only be able to undelete files from the disk if they were not written over by the acronis backup. Yes you might well be able to recover the files from camera storage if it hasnt been used since they were deleted.

[#9]

I'm pretty sure the software treats a memory card in the same way as a disk, so you should able to undelete the files on the card, as long as it hasn't been used since.
John
Whoops - God got in first. (I'm sure there's a sermon there somewhere.)
John

[#10]

A bit late but one site I would like to point you to is here
I have used their products in the past and found them very good at recovering data from badly overwritten hard disks. I’ve pointed you to the photo recovery page but there are other pages on data and file recovery software. They do a free trial of all the versions if you want to have a ‘limited’ go without spending any money.
Regards, P.