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Drive to drive: Bring in the Clones

Have you noticed how inexpensive disk drives are today? Not too long ago, a 40 GB disk drive was considered standard equipment on a desktop PC. Although the drives cost nearly $100, 40 GB was considered all that you'd ever need. That was so 1990s! Today, it is not uncommon to find 120 GB drives selling for less than $100. So now you want to replace that puny 40 GB drive in your PC with a new high capacity drive around, but you don't want to reinstall all of your programs and files. You don't have to — here's how to do it quickly and easily.

One of the components of Acronis True Image is the application formerly known as Acronis Migrate Easy. It's a quick and simple task to upgrade your disk drive.

First, you'll need to install Acronis True Image 8.0. Then, turn off your computer and unplug the power cord. Remove the side panel so that you can get access to the dive bays. Take your new disk drive (don't forget to wear a ground strap or ground yourself by touching a plumbing faucet before working on your system.

Take your new disk drive and remove it from the vendor's shipping material. These instructions assume you are using an IDE drive; in a moment I'll explain what to use if you're using a Serial ATA drive. Do you see the jumper pins on the back?

Now, do you see the map that shows the different disk drive pin combinations? (The map is usually on the top of the drive.) Move the jumper (that's the little piece of plastic that fits over the pins) to the setting for SLAVE. (You may also select Cable Select if you're running Microsoft Windows XP; the Cable Select setting will have no impact if you're running an earlier version of Windows or Windows 2000.)

Plug in the power cord and attach the data cable to the new drive. (Remember, this drive hasn't even been formatted yet.) Make sure that the same jumper on the old drive is set either to Master or to Cable Select. Remember, the Master drive (the old drive) is always plugged into to connector farthest away from the motherboard and the new (blank) drive is plugged into the connection between the old drive and the motherboard.

Now that you've connected your drives, it's time to plug in the computer again.

But first, remember I said Serial ATA — or SATA — drives are different? For SATA drives, there is only one device per cable. That means that when you plug the drives into the disk controller, they will be on separate cables. There are no jumpers to set and you don't have to worry where you plug in the drive, as there is only one connector. Easy, isn't it?

Now turn on your system and run Acronis True Image 8.0. Select the icon entitled Clone Drive and step through the wizard. Your new drive will be partitioned and formatted automatically and the data from your old drive will be copied to the new drive.

When the process is completed, power down the computer and then unplug the power cord. Remove the old drive from the computer. Reset the jumper on the new drive to either Master or Cable Select and move the data plug to the last connector on the cable. Now you're ready to close up the computer, plug in the power cord again and start your system. Your new disk drive will be recognized automatically and now you'll have a lot more space for files, programs, pictures and music.

Remember, if you installed a disk drive larger than 137 GB and you're running Windows XP, you'll need to have Service Pack 1 installed on your system before you clone your disk. Otherwise, Windows might not see any of the storage capacity greater than 137 GB. If you haven't installed the service pack yet, you can still gain access to the greater storage capacity; it simply will be identified as a second disk partition.