Upgrading Hard Drive & Cloning Data

Hello everybody,

I have Windows XP Pro with SP3 on my Gateway Solo 5300 laptop with a 10GB hard drive installed. I would like to install a new 30GB drive.I don't know how to clone the existing drive and transfer the image to the new drive. I heard about a software, but I'm less interested to pay.The laptop has USB and a Firewire Adapter. I also have a desktop with enough hard drive space as well as an external drive I could use for the transfer. The data on the existing hard drive is only 7.25GB. The notebook has no CD or DVD burner. Which will be the best method to go about this transfer? Again, I feel I should be able to do this with the tools I have. I don't want to spend any more money to buy additional hardware/software.

thanks for any help..

Dude,when your machine has a fire wire port that may be the the quickest way to transfer data.look on the procedure online, as I don't have a link to the procedure handy at this time, I can probe later and see if you've posted again when i get off work and if noti cam provide the method for you.

I remember for this situation my friend used an xbox program called Chimp to clone to a bigger hard drive.Have to change the cable from the CD drive to your fresh hard drive.now run Chimp to do the clone from the primary drive to the slave drive. Chimp have the ability to lock/unlock the slave drive. Chimp is amazing with older versions of the xbox. On the XBoxes with the newer video chip you need to telnet into the xbox on a specific ip address because the video is annoyed.

I have one method for you it is with a flash drive guessing that it is not so old that it hasn't USB capability. The other, that you have an ethernet input both systems, would be to use an ethernet crossover cable and set up a physical network between the systems and do the transfer that way. Hopefully both systems are running XP. A crossover cable is not the same as the standard ethernet cable, it is called a crossover or patch cable.