Replacing internal drive with a larger capacity external drive

I tried to clone my current internal hard drive to the external one but the partition which was created is exactly the amount of space as the current drive. That makes sense since it's now a clone. But the problem is all the leftover space on the drive I can't use. So it makes the process pointless. What is the right way to upgrade a hard drive without having to install everything from scratch?

upgrade windows clone partition harddrive replace computer xp

asked Oct 01 '12 at 12:30

JakeT490
16●3●4●8

edited Oct 01 '12 at 12:53

2 Answers:

oldest newest most voted

you can do what you did, load windows (i assume) and then expand it, the question on how to expand has been asked not to long ago on this forum and directions are on the web.

here is one: different os would of course be different but directions are out there for pretty much all of them

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows-vista/resize-a-partition-for-free-in-windows-vista/

answered Oct 01 '12 at 12:42

trueb
14.9k●48●99●256

edited Oct 01 '12 at 12:43

Thanks! I had no idea you could extend or shrink partitions. This machine is a little older, still running XP. Hard drive is only 40GB. I'm upgrading to my 150GB external, which will become internal. Thanks again for your answer!

(Oct 01 '12 at 12:52) JakeT490

not sure if windows xp will allow you to expand it directly, but there is 3rd party software that will

(Oct 01 '12 at 13:37) trueb

Use Driveimage XML to clone the drive. But I promise you, you don't want to run off an external drive

answered Oct 01 '12 at 14:56

Tim Fontana
15.2k●135●198●367

I don't want to run off of it externally. I want to replace my internal drive with it. Literally take it out of it's external enclosure and swap drives.

(Oct 01 '12 at 15:56) JakeT490

Then you should be fine, use Drive Image XML to copy the data across, it works, makes the drive bootable and doesn't normally alter partition sizes, and if it does, there are ways to alter it in Windows 7 if you need. Then you just swap the drives.

(Oct 02 '12 at 01:55) Tim Fontana

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windows ×1,936
computer ×1,411
xp ×220
upgrade ×210
harddrive ×144
partition ×61
clone ×19
replace ×18

Asked: Oct 01 '12 at 12:30

Seen: 565 times

Last updated: Oct 02 '12 at 01:55

Replacing internal drive with a larger capacity external drive

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