Copying a bootable drive

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12340987

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I have looked into all the usual programs, like ranish (don't have a floppy) and drvclonerxp, but my preconfigured dell has a 39MB FAT EISA partition that XP nor drvclonerxp will see. I don't want to go through the hassel of telling everyone were everything is by doing a fresh install and would like to just clone this 150gb SATA drive to a larger 320gb drive.
There doesn't seem to be a program that will clone an entire HDD, just partitions at a time. If I could copy the unrecognizeable FAT partition and then the NTFS partition it seems like it would work, but again, drvclonerxp does not see that drive.
I tried just copying the one partition windows is installed to, but it will not boot. I guess I need that EISA partition. What can I get that will allow me to copy it to a new drive (for free)?
 
Do you have the recovery disk that came with the system? That 39mb is more likely the mbr and partition information. Simply partition and format the 320gb SATA drive and install XP to it. Then download all updates for the board. The installer will then create a new mbr using the partition info on the new drive.
 
Even with cloning softwares often Windows and softwares cloned will often fail to run once on the intended drive. One of the best for drive cloning is the Acronis True Image 9.0 that retails around $50. For a little more at this time you can get a XP full install disk with SP2 and simply put a fresh installation of Windows and softwares and copy files direct by dragging folders from one window to another using Windows Explorer. It may a little longer but you don't see damaged of missing files from an incomplete drive image.
 
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