Feedback: DriveImage XML not used
Altho I planned to describe attempts to use DI XML to test if it would satisfactorily copy old 6GB master contents to new 80GB slave contents before replacing the former with the latter, I found that the procedure and "Data Lifeguard Tools" on the CD accompanying the Wester Digital 80GB HD essentially successfully accomplished the same goal.
After all of your help, I feel bad at not carrying out and reporting on the DriveImage XML experiment but I wanted to express my appreciation while reporting that I had to spend a lot of time getting my six computers hooked up to DSL (knowing nothing about Ethernet, etc.) and wrenching my back lifting this heavy old computer while swapping cables, drives, etc.
You might nevertheless like to know some associated pluses and minuses:
You DO have to use the cable provided (apparently double the 40 wires in the old cable). You remove the old slave drive temporarily, install the new one with slave pin positioning but don't connect the cable/power yet. First, you run the CD and follow the procedures and, after reconnecting, except for a few glitches (below) I found the "whole" of drive 0's contents were copied to the new drive temporarily in drive 1.
THE NEAT THING (major goal I wanted to accomplish) was to update about 35 to 50 MB of Security and other updates BEFORE the Image copy, and installing DSL first made this happen.
Essentially the same procedures as I planned with DriveImage XML were used: After making an image of the system 6GB on to the temporary slave, I removed the former and installed the latter as Drive 0 (after changing the jumper to "master" position).
The minuses:
Although not the fault of the tools (and in fact forewarned by the instructions), the darned old BIOS (Phoenix Tech LTD 6.00, 5/14/98; SMBIO ver. 2.0) would only read about half of the 80GB. I found HP's support site not productive re any available BIOS upgrades or referrals to anyone else if HP offered none.
Another miss/mess: I had two older Symantec Apps that I still used: (1) Norton System Works 2003 whose defrag and quick cleanup I still find fine; and (2) a Norton AntiVirus 2005 which had been updated online, good until 3/07.
NONE of these survived the drive image transfer.
After mucking around a lot and failing to re-install (I don't find Symantec's support friendly), I learned that there is a new-to- me "delete thingy" which seems to kill everything Norton, from today back to the bronze age. This permitted a reinstallation of BOTH since I save every darned CD and confirmation sheet and not only did the reinstallations work, but Symantec issued a "courtesy" subscription extension for a whole year.
This salvaged some of my pique since, although I don't see it yet, I believe there will be some means of buying antivirus, etc. updates for a pricing to cover three PC's at near the price of one. We'll see.
Anyway, thanks for all the help and "Ahl be bek".
Steve