(no subject)

[vodhner at cox.net]

Can Linux dd + parted + other stuff move an XP system to a bigger disk, and then stretch the new partition?

This is a friend's system, way underpowered, and he is living on ramen noodles and sleeping on the floor so any investment is basically out.

The XP partition is only 2 GB, and that's not enough to run.
I can't install the latest security updates, though I've moved the pagefile and IE cache to another device.

So, I have another disk available, 6 GB, and would like to move the XP installation onto it.  I presume I could use dd to move the system in raw form, but then the partition table on the new drive would be messed up.  Right?

Suppose I were to pre-format the new disk to have (approximately) the same size of NTFS partition, with the rest of the disk unused?  Could I do a binary copy of the other partition's contents, and then resize the new partition to use the whole disk?  (I doubt that.)

Someone has suggested BootIt Next Generation, shareware from Terabyte Unlimited (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/).  I have been looking through their documentation but am not sure yet whether it would take care of this for me.  It seems to have some sort of extended partition table format which is a little scarey.

This XP is validated for the box, so hopefully it would not give us a hassle running from a different physical disk if all else remained the same.  I don't have access to his original XP license, of course.  

I'm bringing him up on Linux, but he's using some resources that require Media Player so he needs Windows too.  I presume there's no way around that.

Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Vic