New hard drive causing headaches.

I have an old HP Pavilion laptop running windows xp and I am trying to update it with a new hard drive. After I install the new hard drive (Western Digital Blue 250gb pata) I try to install the operating system. I have 6 floppy disks that I run through and then it calls for me to insert the installation disk with windows xp sp2. I have an installation disk but it only has xp sp1 and it will not continue with the installation. Is there a way around this or do I have to clone the old hard drive to the new one.

 

Those floppy disks are not going to install XP, they merely prep your system so XP can be installed from the CD-ROM in case your PC doesn't support booting from CD (XP is not available on diskettes). Since you don't appear to have the correct installation diskettes imaging your old drive to the new one would be your only option.

 

How would I go about cloning the hard drive? I have cloning hardware but it only works on sata hard drives. XP is on an IDE hard drive.

 

You need cloning software such as Macrium Reflect which works with XP.
https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

 

Try AEOMI

https://www.ubackup.com/

(scroll down to the free version)

 

Tried Macrium and it worked just fine. Thanks a lot.

I want to mark this as solved but I don't know how.
Sorry.