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I want to clone my old desktop IDE HDD, which contains legacy software that run on XP, and use old software on my new laptop. My laptop can accommodate SATA HDD only. Booting from USB port is not working on my laptop. What is the easiest way to accomplish this task?

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an alternative to cloning would be to virtualize your old system and run it inside your new laptop instead of booting separate systems, you can run them both together. Using Disk2vhd technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415 and VirtualBox –  Logman Jul 25 '12 at 21:41
Agreed. Also, don't forget that there's a chance XP will decide it doesn't want to run on the new hardware anyway. –  zebediah49 Jul 25 '12 at 21:45
+1 both for bringing up virtualisation and the possibility that XP might not even run on a modern laptop. It would also allows the new laptop to run a modern OS (Security patches for XP will end some day). –  Hennes Jul 25 '12 at 22:00
The new systems come with 4k sector drives make sure to have the patch applied to xp to allow it to boot to a 4k sector drive. –  Kendrick Jul 25 '12 at 22:11
Does any new drive actually expose that to the OS. I checked that about a year ago when the advanced format drives just got out and back then they just used 4K sectors, but presented virtual 512byte sectors to the OS. –  Hennes Jul 25 '12 at 22:18

1 Answer 1

To do this:

  1. Make a backup first (mostly just in case)
  2. Remove software which you will not use in the new laptop (examples: Special managers for wireless. Fingerprint login programs for a device on the old laptop but not on the new laptop,, ...)
  3. Optionally download drivers for the new laptop and put them in a folder on the IDE harddisk. (Do not install them yet, just download the installers).
  4. Use sysprep to remove all drivers from your current laptop and to shut it down (generalize option)
  5. Make a image of the IDE drive. (Using clonezilla, ghost, Acronis, or one of the similar programs)
  6. Set the new laptop to old fashioned (and slow) IDE mode. (You do this in the BIOS)
  7. Restore the image from that 4 on the new laptop
  8. Boot your new laptop and install any missing drivers.

This and similar questions seem to be asked quite a lot recently. Is there a canonical answer to this which I missed? I feel as if I am reinventing the wheel over and over. If there is none, should I try and start a verbose answer?

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I would also recomend adding drivers to the ide drive for the new system before step 4. not neccessarly installing them just having them on the disk already should be a big benefit. I have seen where it gets to be a real chore if for some reason the nic etc just dont work till you get new drivers for them. –  Kendrick Jul 25 '12 at 22:07
Aye. For XP that can be quite useful. I will add it to the post. –  Hennes Jul 25 '12 at 22:15

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