Resolved Ins and outs of xxclone

I have gone through the help files of XXClone but still have not found all the answers to an upcoming project I will attempt.
In short the PC has a Socket A Motherboard with an Athlon XP 2600+ CPU and a 160 GIG PATA hard drive that is 75% full. OS is XP Pro SP2 with all updates.

The object of the exercise would be to replace the Socket A Motherboard with a 939 board running an AMD Opteron 175 dual core CPU and new 808 GIG SATA hard drive.
( I may add that I have all the parts for it sitting on a shelf waiting to jump into action including a new AMD Opteron cooler heatsink and 3 Gig of G. Skill DDR Ram.
Cloning the old drive onto the new one instead of a new installation of XP is, there are just too many little Apps. and programs where there are no original CD’s available and no longer available to download from the Net.
There are two partitions on the original hard drive C and N aprox. 70 Gig each about half.

How will it go to clone from PATA to SATA
Can I do the cloning to a external USB and then when done attach to the PC with the original HD for testing to boot.
Can I prepare the new hard drive in the external drive.
Or would the whole process be done easier with a Image, with say Acronis.

Any input will be greatly appreciated.

 

I would cover all the bases if I were you. Oft times relying on a single plan to perform as we expect will be a mistake.

I would recommend creating two partitions on your USB drive that will be large enough to hold the clone copies of your current C: and N: partitions. Then use Xxclone to clone the data to each of the USB partitions. You'll do that as two individual cloning operations. That will provide you with a backup and a possible way to clone the data to a new HD later.

Then for sake of redundancy, I would use Acronis True Image to create a separate image of the C: and N: partitions and store those images on the USB drive or any other separate media you have. I don't recommend using CD's or DVD's based on past disappointments with that method.

Be sure to create the boot media for Acronis so you can gain access to the program from a dos boot.

Both of these methods will work from a PATA to a SATA. They copy data only and do not depend on the source drive and target drive being the same size. The only requirement is that the target drive be large enough to hold the data of the source. I often clone and image my 80 Gig drive to a 10 Gig partition since I only have 8 Gigs of data on it.

Dude

 

That correct Steve. I suspect a Repair Install will be required to get things cleared up when the old system copy tries to support the new hardware.

 

@hawk22, If your new board has onboard IDE, I would suggest just plugging the old drive in direct and seeing how it goes.

I'd still make the redundant backups but hope to not need them. If you must buy Acronis for the purpose, it'll not be a bad investment since you'll enjoy a fine backup method when you get your new system going.

 

thank you dude, I will have to stew over this for a little while before I will be back for some more questions.

Steve thank you as well, I have one question for now,
I have read the options from the MS page, and I have to admit that I was not even aware of the MS method when changing working Motherboards, in the past I have always used the repair option on the second R.
Now Steve in your experience which option do you find most reliable the upgrade or the repair that MS recommends for unworkable motherboards.

hawk22