Cloning a Winxp HDD

[Andeh13]

Im giving my sister a bigger HDD then the one she currently has and want to clone the current HDD, which has winXp on. Iv got Nortan Ghost 12 and have googled it looking for walk throughs etc but i still cant get it to work.

Iv tried the basic 'copy hard drive' feature and that seems to work on the surface, but the minute i unplug her current HDD the PC refuses to boot. A lot of the instructions online talk about an actual 'clone HDD' feature but mine doesnt seem to have it.

Some of the instructions also talk about Dynamic & Basic HDD setups and changing between them, again iv looked on the internet for details on how to do this but none were overly usefull. The same with making the new HDD the 'primary boot device'?

Does anyone have any advice on what i could try? Other software, or way around it?

thanks in advance guys.

[mosherben]

Data migration software: copy a hard disk drive to another one

free also for the purpose you have in mind. I used it when i got a larger laptop drive

[peterb]

Easiest and cheapest way is to use a linux live CD. Post back if you need more details (or search the forums - I have described the method before)

[Giraffe]

Data migration software: copy a hard disk drive to another one

free also for the purpose you have in mind. I used it when i got a larger laptop drive

Useful - thanks.

On the same line, if you have at least 1 Maxtor or Seagate HD you can get v10 of Acronis from the manufacturer's site (Maxblast or Seagate*Disc Wizard). Either will work with either; the make of the other HD doesn't matter.
These apps. do install some services to do with scheduled backup, but these can be set to Demand Start.

[EtheAv8r]

Check out ShadowProtect Desktop. I use it to take images of mt freshly built clean PC so I can restore to a fresh clean state in a matter of only minutes. I recommend it very highly. VERY easy to use. Provides great backups and image recovery booting off a CD. It blows Aronis True image away completely IMHO however if you want Acronis 10 cheap.... I have an unused one!

StorageCraft - Provider of online disk backup software, disaster recovery, data storage, data protection, anti virus, anti spyware and internet privacy solutions


ShadowProtect Desktop 3.1 - Reviews by PC Magazine for a review.

[dangel]

Why's it better than TI in your opinion? Just interested!

[peterb]

Iv tried the basic 'copy hard drive' feature and that seems to work on the surface, but the minute i unplug her current HDD the PC refuses to boot. A lot of the instructions online talk about an actual 'clone HDD' feature but mine doesnt seem to have it.

No - copying only copies files within the file system - that excludes the master Boot record which is on the first sector of the ghard drive - andd outside the file system.

As you have gathered, you need to take a logical bit by bit clone of the drive so you copy everyting across in the same logical locations on the second drive as the first. (I say logical, because with modern drives you cannot be certain that the physical locations will be the same, but it dowsn't matter so long as they appear to be in the same place to the computer)

As others have pointed out, there are several applications you can buy to do this. Howev er you can download a Linux live CD (Knoppix for example), boot from that and and use an inbuilt command to do the clone. Fre and easy - just needs a moment to understand the Linux drive naming conventions.

However if you are uncomfortable about using linux, then by all means buy one of the applications mentioned, which will do the job.

Note that once you have cloned the smaller drive to the larger, the extra space will be unallocated. You need to either make the unallocated space into a new partition (when it will appear as a new logical drive - so the machine will appear to have two hard drives) or you need some additional software to expand the existing partition into the unused space. Do that BEFORE you re-use the old dtrive (just in case something goes wrong - you can always re-clone the disk!) One (free) program to do that is GPARTED - again you download it (do a Google search and burn it to a CD - then boot from that CD to do the operations on the hard drive.

[nichomach]

Or use the cloning tools in UBCD for Windows - basically, CD-bootable XP environment with similar functionality to the CD-bootable Linux-based Ultimate Boot CD - Overview.

[[GSV]Trig]

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