Or, even easier than that, would be to use some imaging software (my
favourite being PowerQuest's PQDI. Or, if things turn desperate, Norton
Ghost). PQDI is mainly aimed at FAT32/NTFS users - but also handles *BSD
(amongst other) partitions fairly well too. 

If it were me, I'd slave the old drive, start PQDI from DOS and do a simple
disk-to-disk copy (and let it resize the partitions to allow for any new
space). The only thing to be careful of, however, is drivers when XP starts
for the first time on the new kit!

Stuart


-----Original Message-----
From: port-i386-owner@NetBSD.org [mailto:port-i386-owner@NetBSD.org] On
Behalf Of Tom Spindler
Sent: 17 December 2006 09:11
To: Steven M. Bellovin
Cc: port-i386@netbsd.org
Subject: Re: OT: copying a WinXP disk

If I were you, I'd do the following:

* use one of the gnu parted bootable ISOs to partition the new disk
such that the windows partition is the same size as, and starts at the
same sector offset as, on the old disk.

* boot NetBSD, partition the remaining space, install NetBSD, install
the boot selector.

I suspect (but am far from sure) that the reason Windows is flaking out
is that the MBR/primary partitioning goo is different. FWIW, I've done
this procedure when swapping out laptop drives, and it worked for me.