Old Tech: What's the best (free) tool to clone a WinXP HD to SSD ?

[eppur_se_muova]

I try not to fool with Windows much, but my mom is still using Win XP and I'm trying to upgrade her to Win7 w/out altering any data on her old hard drive. Got a SSD that I was able to clone a different copy of XP to (for a test) and it didn't upgrade to Win 7 smoothly -- win 7 now seems corrupt and I can't reinstall w/out deleting all info I used Parted Magic on SystemRescue CD to copy the original partition. What other tool would be better ? I'm planning to clone her HD first, then install Win7 on the SSD and retire her old hard drive, but Windows apparently gets snitty about whether the cloned copy is "legitimate" or not ...

[customerserviceguy]

1. There's a product called

Reflect from Macrium that I used several months ago to copy my Windows Vista to a larger hard drive to be able to have enough room to install Win 7. While I still not have done the latter, the copying process worked beautifully, but my old Inspiron 1720 has two hard drive slots, making the copying easy. And yes, it was free for a trial period that I was easily able to do the copying within.

I got worried about my old hard drive on the Inspiron, as it was over nine years old, so I bought a factory second Toshiba hard drive from eBay for cheap, blocked out the bad sectors, and now have a really fresh faster hard drive running Vista. I have a copy of Win 7 install, but I use the old Inspiron so much that I really haven't taken the time to attempt the upgrade.

[LuvLoogie]

2. Just copy her files and export her browser settings to an html file

Don't try to migrate her whole profile. Just grab the contents of her documents folder including pictures, vids and music, plus the files on her desktop. Maybe whatever is in downloads.

Assuming you have a licensed copy of Windows 7, just do a clean installation.

Is there room for both hard drives in her PC? If so just boot to the SSD after installing and drag her files over from the other hard drive.

I don't know the architecture of her PC, but there's likely more than one SATA channel available given you were going to install an SSD.

[Chrunos]

3. I recommend AOMEI Backupper

Parted Magic is Linux based. it is not Windows friendly, that i can assure you.
So I recommend you AOMEI Backupper. it is a free SSD cloning software. it can clone within Windows XP or Windows 7. you can also use it to create a bootable USB drive, so you can boot from it to clone hard drive to SSD without loading Windows system.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Thanks ! I'll give that a shot. It sounds like it's aimed specifically at my problem. nt