Data Migration Problems (Dell 8400)

Sigh......If I had only known.

The default 80GB Maxtor in my Dell is pretty much filled up. I went to the store and purchased 2 300 GB 16mb Seagate Barracuda's. (SATA)

I first tried using the enclosed software to MOVE EVERYTHING from the 80 to the 300 but (After calling Seagate, They said I'd have to buy 3rd party software to move everything.)

I got Norton ghost 10.0 And It has the ability to "copy hd's" I chose that solution, clicked the box for Bootable OS and copyed the MBR.......When it finished I replaced the 80 with the 300 and got a msg which said that there was a software error.......

I guess I should state that the 80 gig came partitioned three ways....A FAT partition, a FAT32 partition and the rest was NTFS.....I chose to copy the NTFS partition (Ghost won't allow multiple format copying.)

So my question is, Have any of you smart people out there been able to move EVERYTHING from your DELL hard drive onto a larger HARD DRIVEwithout any software problems? Is there something I'm missing? Any help you can affored me would be GREATLY appreciated! As always, Anyone that does reply kicks ass!

Thanks,

Jeff

Just wanted to let anyone else who happens to look at this know how I fixed the problem.

ACRONIS.......KICKS ASS!!!! DO NOT USE NORTON GHOST! IT'S FREAKING HORRIBLE.

With Acronis I made 4 clicks, Swapped the HD's, and everything worked the first time I clicked the computer on....

Dell puts a lot of junk on their drives.....When I used Norton Ghost to copy the NTFS file over and make it a bootable drive the computer WOULD NOT BOOT. (Besides, with norton ghost I couldn't copy THE WHOLE DRIVE...It only let me copy ONE PARTITION)

I got ACRONIS, Did a COMPLETE COPY of the drive, made it bootable, swapped the HD's, turned on the computer and everything has been working PEACHY since!

(I did it this way becauseDELL does not provide a XP INSTALL disk and I didn't want to lose what I had on the drive.)