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My dad has just put a new HD in his PC to replace the ancient 5400rpm 40GB dog that currently is 'the one'.
What I would like to know, can we just do a straight 'copy all' from the old drive to the new drive, or, as I suspect, would this lead to booting problems?
Cheers.
Well what would be best would both the drives in, make the old hdd a slave, and then boot from the new hdd with your os installed. I must say i dont no how to do that and it may not be the best way. (well the best would be to backup your own files onto some media or a removable hdd).
Try typing it in on google, and wait for someone to carry on. (Just thought i would get it started.)
A straight copy will not work as this will not copy the registry, swapfile and hidden stuff. The best way to do it is to use a program that will copy everything including hidden stuff.
I know programs like norton ghost will do this really easily but that is about £30.
There might be a free program that does this so ill have a look.
Found one!!!
Seagate has a great program called DiscWizard, just download it, install it while still using your old hard drive and select a drive clone or something like that. The drive will be copied from the old one to the new one.
Here is the link to the program: http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/...s/discwiz.html
(Download DiscWizard for Windows, the one in the middle)
Oh i see what you mean now. Well i would recomend a new install andyway, you should do one every 6 months, it will boost your performance and it will be more reliable + it will get rid of all spyware and viruses.
No way is a reinstall needed every 6 months! To remove spyware just use adaware/spybot.
Performance will only decrease with time if loads of crappy programs are installed and bloat the registry. But to fix this just use a registry cleaner, or just dont install the crappy programs - a hell of a lot easier than reinstalling.
I never reinstall windows anymore, I use norton ghost with everything the way I want it.
btw timmy that installs the drive, nothing in the description states it will ghost an image.
nvening, 6 months is a falsity, if you know what you are doing you can easily make a windows install last years, its all about making sure its kept lean and you don;t install suff for the sake and you make sure that when you do you do it in a constructive way.
I have not reinstalled for two years and the only reason I am going to now is because I am moving over to SATA
m@
Yes it does. Press the learn more link and it will state that an option is to clone a hard drive! (Make sure it is for 32 bit version in the middle)Quote:
Originally Posted by visidigi
Here it is:
"As the Boot drive removing the old drive from the system
The next screen will inform you that you must change drive settings (jumpers, bios) when prompted to. Click next to proceed.
DiscWizard will now partition, format, and copy all your files from the old drive to the new one. Additionally a Custom Installation Manual will be created.
DiscWizard will give you an opportunity to print the manual on the next screen. This manual contains detailed instructions on how to make the new drive the master, follow them closely. Make your selection and click next to proceed.
DiscWizard will now turn off your computer. Make the changes outlined in the Custom Installation Manual and restart your computer.
Your computer will now boot to the new drive. He drive is now ready for use."
oops, sorry...
m@
no problem lol, I do that all the time!Quote:
Originally Posted by visidigi
You could also use ghost, acronis true image, drive image, the list goes on.
I got alot of time on my hands lol and i like to keep my pc perfect, i defrag every week! Well ok so i normally reinstall every year not very 6 months, but i do like a new fresh system.
So this free program can create a proper image of a drive? :confused:Quote:
Originally Posted by Timmy!!!
sounds too good to be true :eek:
I have so far bought WD and Maxtor drives as replacement boot drives; both have freeware progs to do a wholesale copy from your old drive. I'd place a bet that Seagate, IBM and Samsung have similar progs available from their websites:crazy:
So, let me just confirm this.
Lets say I install windows on Drive A. I set it up and tweak it to my liking, install all the usual programs etc. Can i then use one of these free programs to create a proper image of that installation and save that image to DVD or another HD to use when i next format? Its a lot lot quicker and easier if its possible http://www.marcosmoreno.org/forums/smile/dunno.gif
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rave
There all based on ontracks software :)
They are all one and the same :)
It will not make an 'image' of it in a file, it will only copy the hard drive exactly how it is. So this program can be used for backup actually! Great eh!
Norton ghost and similar programs make .ghost files and these can only be opened by ghost.
These free prorams will not make one file containing all the data, they literally make a replica of the original hard drive.
Well...thats not too bad http://www.marcosmoreno.org/forums/smile/hs.gif, I suppose i could just buy an older 5GB IDE drive or something to store my backup, but that would just be too much hassle, ideally i want to be able to back it up to DVD perfect so that i simply have to copy the DVD to the HD and windows is back to perfect everytime? Is that possible, with all my settings? Any program do that?
That is possible with norton ghost. I do exactly this procedure with my laptop.
I back up the entire hard drive the way I want it to 3 DVDs, it takes just under an hour in total to backup the drive (it has 18GB of used space)
When I mess up windows I simply restore my computer to the last backup, nice and easy!
There are other programs that do the same but I am not aware of them because I use ghost.
link: http://www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/ghost_personal/
What is the procedure for restoring the images back to the HD? I think my normal installation only takes up one DVD. And if it takes up more i'll clear some unnecessary things to bring it down to 4.3GB.
u will need nortan ghost installed to restore the image as far as i know
That doesnt make much sense :confused:, im wanting to be able to format the only HD in the laptop, how can i run norton when the drive it is installed on is formatting itself? :confused:Quote:
Originally Posted by nvening
There are two options on how to restore a ghost image file back to a hard drive:Quote:
Originally Posted by Marcos
1. From Windows open Norton Ghost and select a 'restore'
2. Use the bootable norton ghost cd to load the DOS version of ghost which will copy an image to the hard drive. This is really useful when windows wont boot or it is a formatted hard drive.
Right, that second one is good, but i want it all on one DVD, but i suppose i could live with 2 disks.Quote:
Originally Posted by Timmy!!!
Ghost can also be operated from the command line. For an older machine I made a bootable DVD, with and image on it. Just pop the disk in and bang 30 mins later windows would be reinstalled. Ghost compression aint too shabby, so i could get a windows install, office and some essentials all on. Couldnt use it for my latest machine as issues with ghost and SATA (native/legacy mode).
If someone needs im sure i can find out what the command line parameters are.
Nimbu
You could use Nero BackItUp to backup a whole drive and then restore to a different drive. (presumably - I'm gonna give it a go now)
Would that be a perfect copy whereby either disk would boot windows on its own perfectly?Quote:
Originally Posted by joshwa
from what i've done it looked like it was doing the whole partition so i would assume yes - i ended up not needing to restore though :)
Another free option is BootItNG, which I've seen highly recommended. But you need to read the documentation, and I haven't got round to it, because I already have Ghost which is fantastic.
Very Very true.. One of my PC's I built in October 2002 (yikes didnt realise it was that old :eek: ) anyway... It still has the original Win2k install, and runs smooth as anything, think in its entire life its had 2 BSOD's.... At one point it was running 24/7 and I think the record uptime was 100-something days (and I dont just mean turned on, I hammered it like crazy, 18hr gaming sessions etc...)..... So this needing to reinstall Windows every 6 months is a joke :) Keep away from crap and you're Windows installation will stay healthy...Quote:
Originally Posted by visidigi
As for copying one drive to another, Ghost is the way ;)
I am running Ghost 9.0.2.3981 on Win XP Home SP2 (all patches). The PC is a mobo Asus P4S8X with 1Gb RAM, and three hard drives - the smallest is C: and is only 40Gb. The C: disk is full and I want to install a large new drive to replace it - can I get Norton Ghost "Clone mode - disk to disk" to copy 100% of the old C: drive over to new drive and then physically reconnect the new drive in the C: IDE slot/chain after it is complete? Will the new C: drive boot up and then include 100% of the old drive including the registry and even Norton Ghost itself? Will this screw up the activiation of Win XP back at the mothership in Seattle?
No that will be fine, it wont mess up any of the activation as long as you only change one component - ie the hard drive. Everything will be copied over, absolutely everything.
I myself actually found it far easier to use seagate's free disck copying software, ghost wouldnt work for me with clone mode.
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/...s/discwiz.html
I used the 32 bit version for use in windows, the interface is great and its very easy to use.
edit: lol looks like im repeating myself, I've alredy posted this link previously in the thread. Its so old I forgot about it though:)
When it boots up on new drive the only win screen I can get is blue with Win logo but the three user login buttons are missing. Cannot get past that.
This thread couldn't have come at a better time.
My father's PC has a crappy 10gig 5400 RPM hard drive at the moment, which sounds like it's on it's last legs.
I'm replacing it with a spare 80gig 7200RPM Sata HDD.
The motherboard doesnt' have onboard Sata so I'm also giving him a spare SATA Controller card. Will I be able to install the card and HDD in Windows on the old installation, then use the Seagate Discwizard software to copy the old drive to the new drive, and use the SATA as a bootable drive straightaway?
Also, will I be able to boot from both drives? i.e. if the copy doesn't work....will I still have all my data on the old drive, and be able to revert to that easily?
Hope this all makes sense....no sleep for 47 hours does strange things to me...:).
Cheers guys
Dos based ghost (ghost2003) has problems with SATA
ghost.exe -noide or -fni works on some, but not all SATA controllers.
Anyone know a dos based disk cloner to replace it?
Must be able to resize disk/partiions on the fly like ghost,
and be able to backup/restore to a file or directly to a dvd.
You may find Drive Snapshot worth checking out. It can do backups and restores either from the command-line (it's less than 200K so can fit onto a floppy also) or with Windows itself (though it cannot restore the active system partition - you have to either boot from floppy/CD or create a backup Windows partition too boot into for this).Quote:
Originally Posted by mikerr
Its strongest feature is that backups can be run in the background without impact on other activities (unless you're burning DVDs or other time-critical, intensive tasks) which Ghost could not until Symantec replaced it with Drive Image (renaming it Ghost 9.0). It can also mount such backups as virtual drives, allowing you to retrieve individual files via Windows Explorer.
The trial version has time-limited backup and unlimited restore capability so it is ideal for once-off backups.
Another option to consider is Acronis TrueImage which offers similar features (though it uses a Linux-based boot CD for restoring images). More information on this can be found at their support forum at Wilders.
boot a linux live cd, work out the drive assignments (hda, hdb, hdc etc for IDE drives; sda, sdb, sdc, etc for SATA/SCSI drives; a clicky parted fromt end such as gparted or qtparted should help you identify things)
then run "dd if=/dev/source of=/dev/target bs=10M"
i've cloned disks like this before without trouble. you can also use it to write /read disk image files, by using /path/to/some/file instead of /dev/device. you can (de)compress those disk images on the fly with some more command line voodoo.
It is a good option for those not wanting to spend anything, but it requires you to boot into Linux for taking backups. Ideally, backups need to be as easy as possible (so people do them more often) which is where the Windows-based image backup software shines.Quote:
Originally Posted by directhex
And getting your if= and of= parameters mixed up with dd can be very painful indeed...
I gave up on Ghost and tried WD Lifeguard. It worked and I was able to boot up in the new larger HD, but there are problems of nightmarish proportions. The Restore functino was gond (even WD admits that and has a workaround) and about 1/2 of all my applications will not open cleanly without looking for some mission files of one sort or another. I have decided to trash the 250Gb drive and go back to the 40Gb which is at least "clean and stable for 2+ years". It is not worth the hassle and I will simply add new programs in the future on the secondary drive.