Once you are fully up and running again, you can reinstall your old hard drive onto the new system as a secondary drive if you wish. Simply follow the drive install procedures we've already outlined, then format the drive from Windows to use it for extra storage.

Partitioning unused space on your new hard drive

Both freeware utilities featured in this article share one characteristic. They do not partition or format the extra space made available when you clone your Windows installation to a larger drive. You can't use the extra space until it is partitioned and formatted by WindowsXP, so it's only fair that we tell you how to do that too. :-)

Once you have successfully cloned your drive right click 'My computer' and select 'manage' then 'disk management.'

Your new drive should be 'disk 0' in the bottom window. If you used HDClone or Ranish Partition Manager to clone the drive, you should have an area of 'unallocated' space to the right of your 'C:' drive area in the lower pane. Right click on this 'unallocated' space and select 'new partition.'

This will bring up the partition wizard. Click next a couple of times and you will be prompted for the amount of disk space you wish to allocate to your new partition. Choose all of it (the default) unless you wish to make several smaller partitions to organize your files. You will be asked for a drive letter to assign the drive, and then given the option to format it (which makes it available to Windows for use). Accept the defaults for both of these options, click 'finish' and wait for your new partition to be formatted.

The whole of your new disk is now available for use. Alternately, you may wish to use a third party utility like Partition Magic to append the extra space onto your 'c:' drive. While the procedure is beyond the scope of this guide, sufficient instructions can be found within the programs themselves.