How to Copy Data From One Hard Drive to Another

This article pertains to copying data from one hard drive to another hard drive on the same computer.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• no special tools needed.

1. Double click on explore or right click on the Start butten and left click on explore. This will bring you to the explore window where you can select the drive to copy from.

2. Right click on the drive letter then left click on Properties. This will show you how much data is on the drive and how much free space you have. Using this technique find out how much data you want to copy, then find out if you have enough space on the drive you want to copy this data to.

3. Select the data on the drive you want to copy from. If you double click on the drive letter in the folders window the folders will appear in the right window in explorer, select one of the directories in the right window then type control A ( hold down the control key and type A) this will select all directories and files on the drive then right click and left click on Copy.

4. Go to the drive you want to copy the data to and select the drive you want to copy to by left clicking on it. right click on the drive and select Paste, you are done. This will copy all your data and may take a lot of time depnding on how much data you dave on the drive.

5. If there is already data or directories with the same name and structure on the drive a dialog box will appear stating that there is already a file or directory with the same name existing on the drive. Before you select Yes or Yes to All MAKE SURE YOU DO WANT TO OVERWRITE the data that is already there, else press Cancel or No or No to All.

6. If you did something that did not seem right to you i.e. if you cannot find your data on the new drive then click on the Undo button (counter clockwize arrow on button) or on Edit menu then Undo Copy . This should get you back to where you started from.

Tips & Warnings

• if you want to copy only data in a directory then select the directory instead of the drive to copy and paste.
• If you want to copy only data in a file then select the file instead of the drive to copy and select the directory where you want to save the file and right click then click on Paste.
• Be careful, when copying from a network drive to another networt drive: the undo function will not work.

[pamam]

on 1/17/2008 Just to clarify --- f you copy from a network drive to another networt drive the undo function does not need to work because you can always delete the copy and all will be the same. I agree with the "DELETE" command there is no undo for a network delete because the trash bin is on another computer other than the one you deleted the file from.