Changing out HDs, How do I transfer programs from 'giveawayoftheday' from one HD to a bigger HD

I am going to swap out my hard dive for a bigger disc. I have already installed win 7, office and some other standard programs I use into the bigger disc. Problem is, how do I transfer programs which I got from 'giveawayoftheday' from the first disc to the second disc?? My data is not a problem because I always partition my disc's and it have it backed up to an external disc anyway.

cheers and thanks in advance

To transfer software that requires installation from one drive to another without the original setup discs will probably require you to image them over.

You can't just copy the directories and files over as you're aware. So if you don't have the software to set them up again on the new drive you'll probably need to image your original HDD over to the new one which will make the new one and exact copy of the original. then once that is done you can resize the partition to whatever size you need on the new HDD.

a reply to: learnatic

Being that you've already started setting up the new HDD means that you would have to wipe that out and start over though. When cloning or imaging one HDD to another it has to be blank and without partition info to start with or will be done for you before the imaging begins.

Why is it that you can't get the setup files again from where you got them before??? Or from somewhere else???

www.techsupportalert.com...
www.macrium.com...
www.techrepublic.com...

It can be an awkward job sometimes but I would advise you to research hard drive back up and disk image on the net so that you dont start until you are comfortable, I made the mistake some time ago and ended up haveing to make a full reinstall, it takes litterally forever if you copy direct the programs' and then search for there seemingly endless registry entrys to export and import so a disc image backup is the best option then use partition magic or similar to reconfigure you partition size or create new logical drives in the unused space.

www.top5freeware.com...
www.paragon-software.com...
download.cnet.com...

Good luck and hope it goes smoothly but also back up any priceless data first just in case.

originally posted by: mOjOm
a reply to: learnatic

Being that you've already started setting up the new HDD means that you would have to wipe that out and start over though. When cloning or imaging one HDD to another it has to be blank and without partition info to start with or will be done for you before the imaging begins.

Why is it that you can't get the setup files again from where you got them before??? Or from somewhere else???

I have tried to reinstall programs that have to be installed during the giveaway period which is usually 24 hours but they will not reinstall once the giveaway time period has expired.

a reply to: learnatic

So it's a Time/Date type of security thing then???? Have you tried installing it with your clock and date set back to when it would install and tricking it that way????

Does it need to install from an online source or do you have the setup programs local???

LABTECH767 gives good advice here I think.

Funnily enough, I cloned a HDD to a bigger one last night with Macrium Reflect (free version).
I've also used Macrium to restore from an image which worked well.
There were some application I chose to download & install again, just in case there were newer versions available.

Cloning appears (to me at least) to remove a step in the process i.e. you are not making an image, saving it somewhere & then restoring it to another drive. It's just clone drive A to drive B.

DEFINITELY backup anything precious. There's always a risk something may go horribly wrong.

Microsoft has provided tools to do this for free. the only problem is they are command line driven.
This is the Microsoft engineer way to do it
-You need to download the Windows Automated Installation Kit which is free from MS.
-You then need to create a a windows PE disk with ImageX included.
-Start up the computer using the PE disk and use imageX to create a windows image file (WIM) on an external drive.
-Then swap the system drive for the new drive and start up the computer using the PE disk.
-Use diskpart (a commandline program on the PE disk) to create a partition that is 100mb in size to hold the boot manager etc, set this to active using diskpart.
-Use diskpart to create the main boot partition of whatever size you want.
- Then use imageX to apply the image(.WIM) you created earlier to the new partition (not the 100mb one). This is a very quick process as its a per file image and not a sector by sector image.
- The next part is tricky, you have to create the boot manager and link it to the windows directory on the boot drive. But i have found an easier way to do it. You can just start up the computer using a windows boot disk and choose 'start up' repair. Then the startup repair will do all the boot manager stuff for you. You may have to do the startup repair twice for it to work.

This is of course for experts only. Im only really writing it out to see if i could remember the steps of the top om head lol

originally posted by: mOjOm
a reply to: learnatic

So it's a Time/Date type of security thing then???? Have you tried installing it with your clock and date set back to when it would install and tricking it that way????

Does it need to install from an online source or do you have the setup programs local???

Now that is something that might work. I do have the files for the set so that is a good thought, thanks

originally posted by: EnochRoot
LABTECH767 gives good advice here I think.

Funnily enough, I cloned a HDD to a bigger one last night with Macrium Reflect (free version).
I've also used Macrium to restore from an image which worked well.
There were some application I chose to download & install again, just in case there were newer versions available.

Cloning appears (to me at least) to remove a step in the process i.e. you are not making an image, saving it somewhere & then restoring it to another drive. It's just clone drive A to drive B.

DEFINITELY backup anything precious. There's always a risk something may go horribly wrong.

I use Marcium so I I'll keep that in mind, thanks

originally posted by: PhoenixOD
Microsoft has provided tools to do this for free. the only problem is they are command line driven.
This is the Microsoft engineer way to do it
-You need to download the Windows Automated Installation Kit which is free from MS.
-You then need to create a a windows PE disk with ImageX included.
-Start up the computer using the PE disk and use imageX to create a windows image file (WIM) on an external drive.
-Then swap the system drive for the new drive and start up the computer using the PE disk.
-Use diskpart (a commandline program on the PE disk) to create a partition that is 100mb in size to hold the boot manager etc, set this to active using diskpart.
-Use diskpart to create the main boot partition of whatever size you want.
- Then use imageX to apply the image(.WIM) you created earlier to the new partition (not the 100mb one). This is a very quick process as its a per file image and not a sector by sector image.
- The next part is tricky, you have to create the boot manager and link it to the windows directory on the boot drive. But i have found an easier way to do it. You can just start up the computer using a windows boot disk and choose 'start up' repair. Then the startup repair will do all the boot manager stuff for you. You may have to do the startup repair twice for it to work.

This is of course for experts only. Im only really writing it out to see if i could remember the steps of the top om head lol

Unfortunately I am not all good at using command line programs so I may have to pass on that one but thanks anyway.

a reply to: PhoenixOD

Wow, why doesn't it surprise me that Microsoft Engineers would choose to do it that way?!?!?!? Only microsoft would make it that difficult!!! What a nightmare....

a reply to: learnatic

I'm not familiar with with Marcium but after a quick read it seems that the Freeware version will take care of the Clone. Then all you need to do is resize the partition to include the rest of the new drive. There are lots of freeware partition tools out there to choose from that will work from within windows so you should be good there too.

This is most likely your best option unless you're also wanting to have a fresh OS install as well. But if everything was working good before and all you're really looking to do is just expand the amount of space with the new HDD then your best option is to CLONE then RESIZE. Plus if something should go wrong in the process with the new HDD you can just switch back and use the old one to boot, wipe the new one and try again till you get it right.

originally posted by: mOjOm
a reply to: PhoenixOD

Wow, why doesn't it surprise me that Microsoft Engineers would choose to do it that way?!?!?!? Only microsoft would make it that difficult!!!

What a nightmare....

TBH you can pretty much automate the process with a batch file script. But yeah its complicated.

I seriously doubt anyone is going to try this but here is a video showing how to deploy a windows image file. It provides a script at the end as well.

Just for us geeks really lol

Making the custom windows PE disks with imagex included and creating the image


Redeploying the image to the new drive (with script)