Moving fragmented files from an almost full HDD to an empty one

[E-66]

I have a 120 GB HDD with over 100 GB of data on it. I know it's not a good practice to do that, but at the time I had no choice but to move the last 30 GB or so of files onto the drive. Those last 30 GB are rather fragmented, and with the drive as full as it is it would be pointless to try to defrag it, so I wanted to know what the best way would be to move the disk's entire contents to an empty 320 GB drive.

Move it all at once and then defrag the new drive after everything is moved?

Move 10+ GB over at a time, defrag the new HDD, then repeat?

Move 50% over to the new HDD, defrag both drives, then move the remaining now-defragged files over from the smaller HDD?

Or what?

FYI, almost all of the files are lossless audio files with an average size around 25-30 MB.

Thanks.

[Tarun]

Is that your only hard drive or is it a media only hard drive?

If it's your only hard drive, you can remove *.tmp, *.bak, *.old and other temporary files. You can also remove items in any temp directories. You may also remove items in the Config.msi directory. I can provide more if needed.

[LLXX]

Move it all at once and then defrag the new drive after everything is moved

[E-66]

It's just for storage.

Thanks LLXX.

[IcemanND]

sounds like a great excuse for disk cloning, like ghost or acronis.

[E-66]

I have Ghost already, although I've never messed around with the clone part of the program.

I'd probably just use xxcopy.

[jcarle]

XXCOPY has never failed me. What a great app.

[LLXX]

I have Ghost already, although I've never messed around with the clone part of the program.

Isn't cloning all that Ghost does?

[E-66]

I meant I've only used it to make images of partitions, I've never done a direct disk > disk or partition > partition copy.

[IcemanND]

Isn't cloning all that Ghost does? huh.gif

Yes, pretty much.