Replacing a failing drive

excellrec · Jun 17, 2006

So my situation is I have a failing o.s. drive that I would like to swap with a new drive by copying all the files and o.s. onto it. These drives will be different brands etc, and not the same size(the new one being twice as big. Is this possible? With keeping the boot records and o.s. intact? If so, how? Thanks, Arit.

TimW · Jun 17, 2006

Utility program such as Ghost should do it.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/Norton_Ghost_d4842.html

excellrec · Jun 17, 2006

I just used norton ghost to make a copy of my drive and it isn't working. I can get the new drive to boot into the blue screen that says microsoft windows right after the green progress bar with the black screen thing. I've tried using the recovery console using the "fixboot" chkdsk /p & chkdsk /r cmd's as the first time I tried it blue screened and said "Unmountable_boot_volume" So why did it not copy the boot information correctly?
The settings in Norton I used for the drive copy were..
- check source for file system errors
- set drive active (for booting os)
- destination partition type, primary
- drive letter "D:"
- copy MBR

TimW · Jun 17, 2006

Your other option is to set the new drive as master, the old as slave, install the os on the new and then copy files from old to new (have found that after doing a format of the old, it may be functional again.)

Insomniac · Jun 18, 2006

Try a Repair, or other suggestions outlined HERE.

Best way though is to format the new drive, and install a fresh copy of Windows.

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Replacing a failing drive

excellrec Private E-2

TimW MajorGeeks Administrator - Jedi Malware Expert Staff Member

excellrec Private E-2

TimW MajorGeeks Administrator - Jedi Malware Expert Staff Member

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