Recommended hard drive data moving program

If I want to move all the data from one drive to another, including the OS and settings, what's a good program to do so without resorting to copy/paste/move *.*?


Also, what should I use to move a game or program from one hard drive to another and have it become "installed" on the new drive with registry settings and everything?

norton ghost?

Yeah Norton Ghost works a charm. Put both hard drives in the same machine, ghost the old one onto the new one. So simple.

Moving individual programs... that's harder, at least under Windows. Copying the files is easy but you'll have to find the settings and copy them over individually. If you have the installation files it'll most likely be easier to install it on the new hd and then copy your saved data in afterwards.

When you use Ghost to move the files, it will move every file, including games and such.

One other thing you might want to look into is that if the drive that you are moving to is made by Maxtor, they have a MaxBlast software package that will format the drive for you, and it will move all of the files on it.  Just something you might want to look into.

I ain't afraid of no ghosts.

It's not always easy to "move" a program so it is installed on a drive with a different letter (moving it from C: to D: for example). Some programs are quite simple - all their relevant data is stored in the registry in some place such as HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/[publisher name]/[software title]. You should search the registry for the name of the folder in which the program was originally installed, which will turn up any values that are stuffed away in obscure corners. You will also need to update your program shortcuts, and check for and edit any configuration/.ini files related to the program (in the program folder, windows system folder, drive root, etc). Other programs are so deeply interwoven into the registry and system files that it is far easier to just reinstall them. If you want to keep custom settings (user dictionaries, toolbar layouts, etc), check the program itself (BEFORE you move it) for a means of saving custom user data.

Seagate discwizard. It's availible free at their site, has worked on every hdd I've used it on.