Will this plan for cloning my hdd work?

I'm planning on replacing the 80GB HDD on my Fujitsu ST5112 with a Western Digital Scorpio Blue 320GB HDD. I've heard that Acronis True Image is a good program to use for cloning, and that if you buy a Western Digital hard drive you can use this software for free. So my plan is to buy the WD drive and an external enclosure, clone my current drive to the new one on the enclosure, than install the new drive and be ready to go. Just wanted to make sure this will work before I start buying parts.

Also, I've heard you can't use your old Windows key on a new hard drive, but haven't seen that mentioned in the threads about cloning. Is this something that's only true for a clean install? If I clone the drive will I need to get a new Windows XP license?

 

As too the HDD change,,I installed a new larger drive on my old notebook-Gateway with XP and used the same license, activated no problem, I did a clean install,, no problems.

Cheers
3Fees

 

I "think" the "free" version offered only lets you do backup/restore not the clone function.

So it can still be done but you cant directly clone one drive to another, you would have to first get acronis running on the new drive and restore an image.

 

or one can use a free software that can do it.

i used this one:

Easeus Disk Copy

they have lots of free products for differing needs.

 

Thanks for the tips, I think I'll go with easeus if I decide to clone. I'm still deciding between cloning the drive and doing a clean install. I'm running Win XP Tablet edition on a Fujitsu ST5112 that I bought used a few months ago. If I decide to do a fresh install would I be able to find an installation disc iso for XP Tablet? I've looked and haven't found one. I'll probably go with the cloning option anyway, since the computer is running fine, but I may go with a fresh install if I can find an iso, just to get rid of whatever bloat there might be.

 

ATI also makes a slimmed down version for Seagate called DiscWizard (free) and that's what I've used to clone (upgrade) twice. It works great. With you going from 80-320, in default settings, while cloning, it will increase any partitions 4 times. For instance if you have a 100MB diagnostic, 20GB C drive and a 59.9GB D drive, they'll be 400MB, 80GB and 239.6GB. You can also manually set partitions sizes the way you wish.

Before cloning you want to make sure you use disk clean-up and defrag.

Used the old HDD and the ATI tool (WD or Seagate) as a back up.

 

Hmmm...Both free versions (WD and Seagate) can do "clones".
Just did last week using the Seagate free version.

 

I assume that the source drive can be anything, but the destination drive has to be a WD/Seagate product?

 

I have used Easeus Disk Copy & Partition Manager a lot, excellent tools.

 

If I remember correctly, my source disk is Seagate and my target disk is WD Scorpio Black.
This implies at least one of the drives has to be WD/Seagate, source or destination.