computer question

[Macs]

i was thinking about upgrading my hard drive to a 120gig. is there a way to make a copy of all my files including operating systems. i have lost just about all of my programs (wife cleaning house!!!). thanks for any help.

[ATC crazy]

I'm not sure about this but I think you can save them to a floppy disk. :? I'm pretty computer illiterate so If someone else would give their ideas.

[J.D.]

You mean a recover disk? I dunno what the extent is, but I think there is some way to do it. I used to be real into computer and have forgotten most of what I know, so I don't know the whole deal. You might want to go find an all-pc forum and have them help you out, there's many tech gurus out there who know there shite and willing to help, good luck!

[86waterpumper]

i always have used norton ghost for this purpose. it will make a bit by bit copy of the entire partition(s) or harddrive, os and all except it will have the extra space obviously on the larger one. This is a very fast process too, usually taking only a few minutes. There are probably other programs that do this same type thing, partition magic probably will copy partitions too. One thing to consider, when a system is older and has had a operating system on it for a few years, a new harddrive is usually a good excuse to just reload everything and clean house so to speak, and possibly upgrade to a newer version of windows. Once the drive you had now was setup as a slave, or put on the second ide channel, files other than programs could then just be copied from the old drive to the new one. It really speeds a system up to get rid of all the bits and pieces of software crap, extra dll files etc. It is obviously more trouble since you have to reload drivers, etc, but worth it sometimes in the longrun I think. Whichever way you decide to go, good luck.

[bbechtel16]

i always have used norton ghost for this purpose. it will make a bit by bit copy of the entire partition(s) or harddrive, os and all except it will have the extra space obviously on the larger one. This is a very fast process too, usually taking only a few minutes. There are probably other programs that do this same type thing, partition magic probably will copy partitions too. One thing to consider, when a system is older and has had a operating system on it for a few years, a new harddrive is usually a good excuse to just reload everything and clean house so to speak, and possibly upgrade to a newer version of windows. Once the drive you had now was setup as a slave, or put on the second ide channel, files other than programs could then just be copied from the old drive to the new one. It really speeds a system up to get rid of all the bits and pieces of software crap, extra dll files etc. It is obviously more trouble since you have to reload drivers, etc, but worth it sometimes in the longrun I think. Whichever way you decide to go, good luck.

He makes me proud. My thoughts exactly.

[ATCRYDER]

The way I always do it is save everything important in one folder on the old harddrive and then copy it over to the new one if you plan on running the new one as the master, and not the slave. Do not copy programs or the OS, it can be done easily but its worth it to have a CLEAN system.