Cloning a PATA drive to SATA?

[Leporello]

Dear Friends,

I'd like to move my system from my current Maxtor PATA drive to a new SATA Maxtor. When I installed Windows XP SP2 I installed the SATA and RAID drivers at the F6 stage of the install. I have Acronis True Image 9.

I've read a couple of posts which state categorically that it would be nececessary to do a repair install of Windows if I clone my system from a PATA disk to a SATA replacement. Given that I already have the SATA drivers installed into the OS, is this repair install really necessary?

I don't overclock or tinker with my system very much, I've successfully cloned PATA to PATA drives in the past but I'm unfamiliar with SATA drives.

Many thanks for your attention.

 

[semi-pro waster]

I've not tried this so I can't categorically say but if you have installed the SATA drivers then I see no reason why you shouldn't be able just to plug the drive in and use it. Of course there is always the caveat that a fresh install is better..... Why don't you just plug it in and try it anyway? You won't be losing anything as you will still have the PATA should the SATA drive not work first time.

 

[Leporello]

Many thanks for the prompt reply. I agree that it given that the correct drivers were installed previously it appears that the PATA to SATA clone should not require a repait install. I haven't bought the drive yet as I'm reluctant to do a re-install and reconfiguration so soon after a complete rebuild, so I can't try your suggestion of plugging it in and seeing if it works.

There must be loads of people here who've made the transition from PATA to SATA and I'd be very grateful if some of these people would share their hands on experience.

Thanks again for your reply.

 

[skankmaster]

I moved from PATA to SATA, primarily to replace several drives with a single one. Just dont rely on the clone utilities you get on the Hard drive manufacturer sites. They never copied all the files across. A year later, this is still the case - annoying. Unicode filenames just seem to be ignored. In the end, I re-installed and copied across the data files.

 

[Leporello]

Ah well, no definitive answer to my query. Perhaps in due course I'll try to clone a PATA drive to SATA. Then I'll be able to answer the question should another forum member ask it.

 

[sniperpenguin]

Norton Ghost will do it without any problems.

 

[v0n]

Been there done that - moved from PATA to SATA on both home machines, once with Norton Ghost, it was really easy, once with Knoppix CD and ntfstools, it was ok, but copying working mbr was a bit of a pain. Use Ghost and it will be just like PATA to PATA

 

[Leporello]

Many thanks to both of you. I knew that there would be people out there who knew the answer.

Cheers friends