Well, Acronis True Image WD Edition worked just fine
and transferred my system to a new WD 'Caviar Blue' HDD.
The only problem was that it took five attempts to get
the file from here (kept stalling, first at 30mb, then
50, then 70, etc, annoying).
support.wdc.com
I haven't checked to see whether Windows XP will still
identify that the system as 'genuine', but not sure
I care about that much anymore, though XP did check
on that when I downloaded MSFT security essentials,
so it paid off being 'genuine' that day.
$44 for the new drive was well worth the peace of mind
--I can play around with different boot managers, add
that Mint linux partition finally, and rest easy with
my original genuine boot drive tucked away in a static bag.
I did not copy the ~5GB original Dell restore partition,
cannot imagine ever setting my system back to the
factory install anyway, and there's always the backup
drive. Just for interest sake, if anybody should ever
lose access to their factory OS restore partition,
there is this
goodells.net
Just to be insanely safe, I also have a Macrium image
of my boot drive, as well as an NTbackup file, AND
DVDs of the image. Maybe that's paranoid, heh.
I bought this new drive from newegg and bought this combo
newegg.com
The tuneup utilities is kind of nifty, I like it too. |
