How do I move winXP to my new disk?

I have just bought a new Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB (HD103UJ) and I would like to move my current XP installation to my new disk without having to reinstall. I have tried using Norton Ghost 14 to copy the drive but I'm having problems getting windows to boot on the new disk. It shows the windows logo but when the "loading personal settings" message should show it just turns blue and nothing happens. Besides the small problem of the disk suddenly being only 8GB large which I solved using SeaTools. Any and all help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

Problem solved, windows moved succesfully. I used Acronis True Image Echo Enterprise Server. Much easier to use then Norton Ghost, worked like a charm on the first try. I should have known better then to use a Norton program, I've never liked them.

 

Yep: I have pretty good luck w/Acronis, for what it is...

And once I get the OS set up, and cleaned up, all that, I just make a mirror copy to another HD, and forget about it, maybe checking it, and updating it once in a while, as everything--including Antivirus, and MS themself--seem to recognize mirror as original...*unless* I try to get slick, and move the hard drive to another computer...

Then I always get caught, and have to beg, plead, and just plain lie, to microsoft to get them to let me use the OS, in a new box, w/new motherboard, and new cpu, and that sucks, so I usually just go on Craigs, and find me a new OS for around 80-100, depending on version, type...

But what has never worked good is the other Acronis apps, which sort of make a back-up, which they regularly update, and if things get crazy, and you can't boot, you can use the acronis boot...

Maybe I'm just lame, but it's easier just to make a 'mirror' and be done with it...

Best wishes...

 

... especially when what you want to do is recover from the death of your primary hard drive!

Seems to me its the easier way to get a system going again -- once you've got the "mirror" copy and have figured out how to get it onto a replacement system or drive after the original one has died. (Re-)installing the OS is bad enough, but re-installing and configuring all the application software as well is something to be avoided. It can take days.

Would you care to enlighten us? Like:

• What software works well to make a mirror copy that can be used to recover from a primary hard drive failure?
• Can you put that mirror copy on an external hard drive that's substantially larger than the partition you're mirroring without destroying other partitions on the external drive?
• Is it possible to use a DVD disk to store the mirror -- and to restore the "mirror" copy to a new hard drive?
• What steps need to be taken when using the mirror copy to get a replacement primary drive up and running -- noting that when you have to do that, you do not have an OS installed on the primary hard drive?

 

I'll answer these best I can, knowing that I might be wrong, but this is my experience:

1) I like Acronis, I didn't have any problems making a mirror, while w/Norton, I had a few difficulties...could have figured'em out, but I think I'm biased against Norton anyway, so could be that: but the Acronis disk walks you right thru making a solid mirror on another hard drive, but they make it pretty clear, that this is *supposed* to replace yer old HD, not be used to try to have two HD's...but I do, because I want to keep the new one updated, and don't totally like their other apps, which sort of maintain a *section* of another HD for booting purposes: I'm a mirror guy, keeps it simple...

2) Acronis wipes out everything on *new* HD, then loads copy, size of new HD doesn't matter, and as long as software can read it, or find it, it will work, as long as it's at least as big as HD being copied, and I tried making a copy of a dual boot, and it didn't work as good, for me: Acronis copyed only the Vista setup, not the other half of my HD...but I had sever old HD's around, so I just made two copys...

3) I'm not sure about the DVD: again, it's a *size* thing, and that would limit it, but that's a good question: I just have several canabalized computers, so I have bunches of "pretty good" HD's...

4) I can't answer this one, either, as all my mirrors have been of primary HD's that *did* have a legal OS...

Again, only problems I have had, have been when replacing motherboard, after I thought I had fried it...(It turned out to be Power Supply Unit, but anyway) MS made me call them, and they bought it, but it was tough, because I figured as long as I was replacing Mobo, why not thro in a new cpu, and ram, etc...and of course, MS saw it as a "new" computer, and weren't buying it, but finally relented...

Best wishes, hope someone else can answer questions I couldn't...

 

Sorry, duckfeet, I wasn't clear about my intent. I'm not looking for a way to clone a single copy of the OS onto a second machine. I'm looking for a simpler way to recover from a boot drive failure -- one that doesn't involve re-installing an OS and all its application software. All of the software -- OS included -- is legitimate, and would be used only on the machine on which it was originally installed.

My point was that when I have to use the mirror copy to restore the OS and application software to a replacement drive, there will be no functional OS in place because the original drive that was carrying it has died. With no OS in place until I restore the mirror copy to a new primary drive, how does one do the restore operation? It's a classic "Catch-22" situation.

Or does Acronis provide a boot disk that one can use to restore the boot partition to a new drive from the mirror copy?

And as for mirroring to DVD disks -- one would need software that could span DVD-DL disks unless the partition being mirrored was smaller than 8.4GB. Can Acronis do that? Is there other software that can do that?

 

Oh, I see what you are saying...hmm, I may have to think about it: it might be above my pay-grade

I'll see if someone else can answer that, as I've had similar problems, and ended up, you know, loading the acronis disk, and seeing if it could find *anything* to help me, and ditto w/Norton disk, and I'm not sure how I solved this problem...

I'll think about it, and if no one else gets back to you, I'll thro my ideas in tomorrow, I was out swimming in cold pacific ocean for a long time today, and I'm *whupped*...best wishes tho, sounds kind of trcky...

 

There's a difference between cloning a hard drive and creating an image of it?

What is the difference and why does it matter -- given that what I want to do is be able to restore my boot partition to a new drive if the old one fails?

 

hello Top. You could try xxClone. Has tools to make copy disk bootable. Windows does ask which copy to boot from afterwards though.(Just trying to help.)

 

Acronis True Image will automatically divide up the image file it creates into appropriate chunks that will fit on the storage medium that you choose to store it on. Thus, the larger the image file, the more CD's or DVD'd that will be required. The program does have a feature that allows you to select the level of file compression. This does help reduce the image file size. Smaller image files are OK for DVD's but with larger ones it's easier to use an external USB hard drive.

 

Yep, I've used broken laptop HD's that I put Acronis clones on, and when original OS failed to boot on my pc, I threw in *new* clone, and no problem...as "clone" means cloning *everything*, not just certain files, etc...and boot sector is on HD, unless you think bios is corrupt, and I doubt it...that's why I hesitated to answer, as I wasn't sure again, if I was talking about the same thing...I've fought HD's on other machines, once they went bad, or I had put linux OS's on, and wanted XP back, trying to reboot, putting in Norton and Acronis, and all kinds of stuff...but that's because I *hadn't* made clone of this particular HD...now I know better: they all get cloned...IMO, it's simplest way to solve *future* problems, as cheap as smaller HD's have become....

 

I recently had this same problem trying to clone my C:\ drive with Norton 14, and I managed to get around it.
- After you have attached the drive you want to copy to (the new drive), but before you start the copy...
Make sure that there is not a drive letter for the new drive.
You can do this by:

• GO TO: Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management
• Once there GO TO: (On the left frame) Storage > Disk Management (This will show you all of the drives attached to your computer)
• (***Warning*** the next step may make it difficult or impossible to retrieve data from the new destination drive, but that should not matter since we are trying to copy to that drive from the C:\ drive.)
• Right click the new destination drive, > Change Drive Letter and Paths... and remove the drive letter.
• I also deleted the partition (right click drive delete partition), but I don't know if that is required.
• Perform the disk copy using Norton Ghost 14 and be sure to leave the drive letter set to none.
• Set the destination drive to master and to boot windows.

I hope this helps.

 

I'll tell you the way that I solved the same problem. Make sure that your destination disk is larger than your source drive. Then go to the web site of your destination drive, for instance Quantum.com and after you've downloaded the disk copy software and atleast one of the drives is made by that company, you can make an exact copy of the drive onto your destination drive. I hope this helps.

 

True. Most drive manufacturers provide software that allows you to copy an existing drive or partition onto their drives. It's usually included with a new drive if you buy it in a retail box.

However, my experience with some of the manufacturer's utilities is that they will wipe out any data that's in the destination partition, and some may wipe out everything that exists on the destination drive, including partition tables.

So if there's anything you want to keep on the destination drive, back it up to another drive first -- even if it's in another partition on the destination drive.

A side note: Quantum sold its hard drive division to Maxtor in 2001 and went on to other things. Maxtor assumed responsibility for support of all Quantum hard drives as part of that transaction, so there is little or no hard drive information or support on Quantum's website now. In turn, Maxtor was picked up by Seagate in 2006, and is now a subsidiary of the latter company.

Events like those can make it difficult to find the right website for supporting software. One trick that often gets you to the right website quickly is to google the manufacturer/model no. of the drive in question. The model no. alone is often enough.

 

You can restore that image to a different hard drive. I did just that when I replaced my 100GB HD with a 160 GB drive in my laptop. Cloning the drive would have required me to buy an adapter to connect the second laptop HD. It was much simpler (and cheaper) to restore the image on the new drive.

 

Thanks to the contributions provided by several posters between now and a month ago when I posted the above question, I think I can now answer it myself.

A clone is what it suggests it is: a functional duplicate of the original hard drive. The clone may be on a larger hard drive, or could be a partition of a hard drive as long as the clone partition was as least as large as the original drive. Most importantly, if the original was bootable, so also will be the clone. In other words, the clone can simply take the place of the original drive at any time.

An image contains the same content as the imaged drive, but it will be a file, not a drive or partition. It will include boot records and partition tables, and may be compressed and/or spanned across multiple media. The storage media for the image can be any technology used for storing files. The image will not itself be bootable or editable, even if the imaged drive was. The image can be used to recreate the imaged drive or partition on the original media, or on replacement media if for some reason the original drive or partition is corrupted. If the image was a sector-by-sector copy, it might have to be restored to a hard drive partition of exactly the same geometry as the original unless the image restoration software is capable of building a replacement file allocation table for an imaged partition restored to different media.

It follows from the above that an image can be used to create a clone, but is not itself a clone.

Anyone care to add to or correct the above?