Ok, from pushing the power ON button to desktop, 14 seconds.

Now the loading of old programs, setting up email, getting everything copied.

I plugged in the original HD without changing any jumper settings, just to see what would happen. Hey, what do you know? It shows up in My Computer, perfectly accessible, just like Dragon said it would. Well, almost--I cannot get to the c /documents and settings/user/local settings/application data/ files on the original HD, It tells me access denied. But I can reboot and choose the original HD as the boot device and get to that stuff, then reboot with the new SSD.

And so, the day is saved, and I went about setting up all the drivers, installing Outlook and moving over my PSTs, MS Office, WS_ftp and the site files, etc.

Last, I added the new 1TB backup HD, formatted it, and bam, I have a ton of space to back up files. Western Digital thoughtfully provided Acronis True Image WD edition for that, but it seems to choke, telling me it will take 4 days to do the backup (after 7 hours, the whole PC stops responding). Can anyone suggest a good backup program? I also have Norton Ghost 10 from a couple years ago, I might install that and give it a try.

I suspect its something to do with using XP and that program.
However Norton should work just fine.
Also the two Weston Digital Green 1tb drives I have installed also seem to struggle
Keeping up with the Corsair M4 SSD drive I have installed as the main C: drive

ok, I installed Norton Ghost 14. Tried to make a backup. Got an error, just like it used to do back when I bought the program. These backup programs suck.

If you go to Western Digital's website they should have (used to have, like most of the big disk manufacturers) a free program to copy your drive. Should be better than anything Norton can do.

Anything else?

Sorry, I now remember reading that but forgot yesterday.

I'm just going to stay quiet now.

I’m not sure what you are trying to do.
But if you are attempting to create a “image” of your system drive and not copy
personal files the error you are encountering might be due to the fact you have already
added Windows Update files to your system.
To create an image of you system files for some reason this has to be done before you update window. As an image file can be used to re-boot your computer and restore it also so I think it then falls into copyright or something like that.

If you are wanting to copy or back-up your own files then there is always the good old right click and copy to option in my documents :D and also pick and drop

Acronis True Image is the best you can get to make a recoverable image of your system and usualy doesnt take long to do. Make a bootable CD to boot you PC to recover it with the image backup. I find just making a clean copy once after all setup and installation and updates is good enough.

If your trying to mirror your HD to another HD Acronis will do this but you need a blank HD. This will allow you to swap drives keeping your current setup.

Backing up your data to me is just having it at another location other than your main HD, if your main drive fails your data is safe. Of course backing up this drive to an external would be one step more. Copy and paste to move the files.

Please read the second post on this page again :up:

The hard drive is the weak point in the computer, try getting ssd disk.

Neal,

That access denied error is probably caused by the fact that the access rights aren't setup properly.

The old disc was managed by your previous OS.
So the users who had access to this disc and certain folders are now unknow to the fresh installed XP.
Hence your current OS denies acces to them.

Check if you have access rights to that disc/folder before doing anything else.
There is no need for a backup procedure at this moment.

[EDIT] Added Neals remark.

what do you think this thread is about :timeout:

:o that's so yesterday

Why, and Norton is out.... Yup Enigma, his permissions are based on another SID. You should be able to take ownership.

Clear now :hmmm: