Shifting XP OS from a small 8GB drive to 160Gb internal HD

[#1]

My old Dell OptiPlex G110 had only 8GB HD, so not a lot of space for anything useful apart from AVG etc., I have managed to instal a second HD of 160GB with 2 partitions of 80GB formatted NTFS. What I would like to do is to copy the whole of the 8GB into the second drive and be able to boot XP from there. I am sure that there are more hurdles to be overcome than just copying and changing the second drive letter to C. No doubt these could be a product of M$ to make life difficult, I hope that you clevr lot will have found a solution.
Ta in advance!

[#2]

I copied my Windows XP partition from one hard drive to another some time ago, I can't remember exactly how, but I would have done it with gparted in Linux, copying the partition from one disk to the other, and resizing it afterwards.
I didn't have to do any drive letter changing because I was replacing the old hard disk with the new one, once I had finished everything the new disk was in the place of the old, and the old disk had been removed.
I doubt you will be able to do it from inside Windows because numerous files like the registry will be always in use.

[#3]

Thanks ejs,
A good point, bearing in mind that it might have been done via XP, making the use of internal progs might well have had a nasty effect on the dreaded Registry et al. Mint 11 Live CD on the shelf ready to go when I have some more time.
I will be ditching the old HD and, probably putting another 160GB in its place for other interesting activities.
 

[#4]

You probably want to use clonezilla to do it (another cd but a small one) then choose advanced and copy and expand drive 1 to 2 (8 to 160) that way it will use the whole disk, unless you want to keep an 8gb partition for win and a larger one for your files ?

[#5]

Hmm, lots of pitfalls there..........
What I would try is:
1. A low-level copy disk to disk to create the 8GB partition on the new disk. Things like HDClone etc. Then check it works OK.
2. Some sort of partition utility to "regularise" what is then quite possibly a somewhat odd/inconsistent partition table
3. Resize the partition using a similar utility to 80GB or whatever you want.
4. Fill the rest of the drive in the normal way.
I'm guessing these are IDE drives, not SATA.
Also, if your original partition isn't NTFS don't worry, XP has a FAT to NTFS conversion. Do it after stage 2.

[#6]

@HP
1,2,3 that’s what clonezilla does 

[#7]

Look up Laplink software.....

[#8]

OK lads, all thought-provoking. I do have a copy of Clonezilla-lite 1.2.6-40->486 ISO but have not played with it. My new drives are IDE. The original disc is formatted to NTFS as are the new ones.
ejs' point about not running  XP while copying seems to be a good one and I do have Mint 11 Live CD.
My son, who is much into high-powered industrial software, advises caution in that it appears that M$ craftily include bits of code that actually records the HD ident so that anyone who tries to put registered Os's on to another drive (on another machine?) cannot do it. That would be hard on someone doing it on the original machine. Any views on this?
 

[#9]

As I said, I did do it, I think I had to re-activate Windows, but there was no problem doing that automatically. I didn't need to phone up Microsoft and explain anything to them.

[#10]

I have cloned MANY (more than I care to remember) Windows partitions to new hard drives, have resized, moved, converted, reordered, and even re-lettered existing partitions, and I have NEVER had to phone Microsoft,  as long as the motherboard stays the same !
If you clone a Windows drive and stick that into another machine, then you are likely to start getting into trouble !

[#11]

Quote from: Hairy

1,2,3 that’s what clonezilla does

Excellent, not a product I know so I phrased my reply in more generic terms.
I've tried all sorts of "tricks" over the years; sometimes just a copy of the partition can work.
And occasionally you may need to run a "repair install" of Windows afterwards or call Microsoft, but in my experience that's pretty rare.
In this case, being a Dell, it's highly unlikely a call will be needed as proper OEM installs bypass quite a lot of that stuff on XP, assuming the original was done from the correct Dell media.

[#12]

I have found HDClone 4 and downloaded it. The comprehensive Manual (76 pages long!) needs digesting and I will take it from there unless you advise otherwise. Sadly I do not have the original XP disk as it was an OEM job at the original company owner. So caution is the watchword. See also my discussion with purleigh under installing Uktra100 Tx2 Controller above.
C.