2nd HD for "emergency" install of XP?

[waterboy]

hi all,

i have a 2nd hard-drive on a 3 year old Dell desktop with Win XP home

i was wondering how i might prepare my 2nd hard-drive for an emergency
install,
in case my 1st hard drive ever started failing, or gave out

is there an simple way to prepare for this possibility?
i've changed HD jumpers/pins in the past
i just don't want to be caught without at least one good HD

my Dell came with an operating system Re-installation CD

could it be as simple as changing jumpers [2nd HD to main HD]
and putting in the Re-installation CD?

thanks
waterboy

 

[Jim]

hi all,

i have a 2nd hard-drive on a 3 year old Dell desktop with Win XP home

i was wondering how i might prepare my 2nd hard-drive for an emergency
install,
in case my 1st hard drive ever started failing, or gave out

is there an simple way to prepare for this possibility?
i've changed HD jumpers/pins in the past
i just don't want to be caught without at least one good HD

my Dell came with an operating system Re-installation CD

could it be as simple as changing jumpers [2nd HD to main HD]
and putting in the Re-installation CD?

thanks
waterboy

The only safe way is to disconnect the failing disk. As your machine
probably uses cable select, no jumpers need to be changed, but just to be
safe, put the end of the cable on the good drive.

Finally, disconnect everything except the monitor, the keyboard, the mouse,
the CD drive, and the replacement disk. Be certain that the machine is not
connected to the outside world.

Now, access the BIOS and set the CD to be the first drive to check in the
boot sequence.

Then, you are ready to put in the installation CD (and it must be the one
that has XP).

Once it has done its thing, install the DELL drivers, etc., from the driver
CD.

Next, install XP SP2.

Then, install all of the DELL software from the software CD.

Now, enable the windows firewall, and start the network stuff.

Then, go to Windows Update, and install all of the critical updates.

Next, install an AV software, Spybot, and Ad-aware.

Now, you can create such user accounts as you may need.

Finally, reconnect all of the disconnected gear....

Yes, it takes a long time. But, most of the time you are just sitting there
watching the computer work.

Jim

 

[Poprivet]

hi all,

i have a 2nd hard-drive on a 3 year old Dell desktop with Win XP home

i was wondering how i might prepare my 2nd hard-drive for an emergency
install,
in case my 1st hard drive ever started failing, or gave out

is there an simple way to prepare for this possibility?
i've changed HD jumpers/pins in the past
i just don't want to be caught without at least one good HD

my Dell came with an operating system Re-installation CD

could it be as simple as changing jumpers [2nd HD to main HD]
and putting in the Re-installation CD?

thanks
waterboy

Well, technically, you can't install XP twice on the same computer, per the
EULA. But, you can certainly create backups of it, and store those.

Ideally you'd use an imaging software to create a compressed image of your C
drive and store it on the second one. Make the Recovery CD offered by most
all imaging software, and you're ready to restore the image to any drive of
the same or larger size than the one that was imaged.

Then, to be completely safe from disaster, store the image on DVDs, or
another hard drive, stored separately and away from the computer. The
Recovery CD goes with it, of course.
Most imaging software will span images across multiple DVDs.

Personally, I use: An external USB hard drive for my backups and images.
Then periodically I make DVD copies for safekeeping.

 

[Anna]

hi all,

i have a 2nd hard-drive on a 3 year old Dell desktop with Win XP home

i was wondering how i might prepare my 2nd hard-drive for an emergency
install,
in case my 1st hard drive ever started failing, or gave out

is there an simple way to prepare for this possibility?
i've changed HD jumpers/pins in the past
i just don't want to be caught without at least one good HD

my Dell came with an operating system Re-installation CD

could it be as simple as changing jumpers [2nd HD to main HD]
and putting in the Re-installation CD?

thanks
waterboy

Well, technically, you can't install XP twice on the same computer, per
the EULA. But, you can certainly create backups of it, and store those.

Ideally you'd use an imaging software to create a compressed image of your
C drive and store it on the second one. Make the Recovery CD offered by
most all imaging software, and you're ready to restore the image to any
drive of the same or larger size than the one that was imaged.

Then, to be completely safe from disaster, store the image on DVDs, or
another hard drive, stored separately and away from the computer. The
Recovery CD goes with it, of course.
Most imaging software will span images across multiple DVDs.

Personally, I use: An external USB hard drive for my backups and images.
Then periodically I make DVD copies for safekeeping.

waterboy:
Certainly the basic backup procedure outlined by Poprivet is one to
consider. Just to add to his or her comments...

Using a disk imaging program such as Acronis True Image for example you can
choose to create a "clone" of your day-to-day working HDD in addition to
using that program to create a disk image of your system. (The disk image is
a "snapshot" of your system that is contained in a single file and
subsequent incremental files).

The advantage of a disk clone is that no recovery/restoration process is
necessary as it would be in the case of restoring a disk image. The clone,
being in effect a duplicate of your working HDD is immediately bootable.

I'm not particularly recommending one approach over another. Both have their
advantages. We've spelled this out in more detail in some step-by-step
instructions we recently prepared on the Acronis program and which we've
posted to this and other MS newsgroups. If you're interested in using a
program of this type I'll post them again here.
Anna

 

[C.Wilder]

hi all,

i have a 2nd hard-drive on a 3 year old Dell desktop with Win XP home

i was wondering how i might prepare my 2nd hard-drive for an emergency
install,
in case my 1st hard drive ever started failing, or gave out

is there an simple way to prepare for this possibility?
i've changed HD jumpers/pins in the past
i just don't want to be caught without at least one good HD

my Dell came with an operating system Re-installation CD

could it be as simple as changing jumpers [2nd HD to main HD]
and putting in the Re-installation CD?

thanks
waterboy

In my opinion the best and fastest way is to clone your drive with the
backup utility that comes with the it.This could not be easier of faster. I
always have a drive ready that can be placed into the drive bay drawer.
Takes as long as it does to reboot to have everything like new. Other than
any applications you may have installed or email which you can retrieve if
you care to store on USB sticks etc..

If someone has a simpler way I sure want to know.

Wilder.

 

[R. McCarty]

Personally, I don't use cloning for recovery purposes. For me the best
solution is using more than a single drive in the system. To distribute the
workload one drive has XP & applications on it's first primary partition.
The 2nd drive has all user data ( My Docs, ...). I also use a dedicated
volume for Multimedia. The XP volume is kept as lean as possible. It's
current used space is ~5.7 Gigabytes. I use Acronis True Image 10 to
image/verify the XP volume to the 2nd drive on a Images partition. For
TI to perform the image takes under a Minute, 30-Seconds. I then burn
the image file (.tib) to a DVD optical disk so it's stored off the PC.

Doing it this way, I can do a recovery and don't have to worry about
personal data loss as all that isn't on the XP partition. No one solution
works for everybody. When I recently retired my primary desktop I
decided to leave the PATA tray out of it's replacement. I now use an
external SATA setup which gives me most of capabilities of the Tray &
Swap system I had before. Plus the external SATA has boot capabilities
and significantly higher throughput. (Sustained transfers of 67 Meg/Sec).
If I need to temporarily plug in a PATA drive, I just use a IDE-to-SATA
adapter and have immediate access to the disk without having to mount
it in a tray assembly.

hi all,

i have a 2nd hard-drive on a 3 year old Dell desktop with Win XP home

i was wondering how i might prepare my 2nd hard-drive for an emergency
install,
in case my 1st hard drive ever started failing, or gave out

is there an simple way to prepare for this possibility?
i've changed HD jumpers/pins in the past
i just don't want to be caught without at least one good HD

my Dell came with an operating system Re-installation CD

could it be as simple as changing jumpers [2nd HD to main HD]
and putting in the Re-installation CD?

thanks
waterboy

In my opinion the best and fastest way is to clone your drive with the
backup utility that comes with the it.This could not be easier of faster.
I always have a drive ready that can be placed into the drive bay drawer.
Takes as long as it does to reboot to have everything like new. Other than
any applications you may have installed or email which you can retrieve if
you care to store on USB sticks etc..

If someone has a simpler way I sure want to know.

Wilder.

 

[waterboy]

thanks all, lots of ideas
i've always liked using a 2nd large installed HD [for backing up Docs &
storage]

this compressed "image" sounds interesting

for example: if my main disk failed, what would i do?
1. shut off
2. disconnect HD 1

3. will it automatically recognise the 2nd HD as the "Main" now,
or do i have to go into the Bios and change a HD setting?

4. and how does this compressed Image become usable on boot-up?
[some of this may be explained with the image software i suppose]

thanks
waterboy

 

[Rock]

thanks all, lots of ideas
i've always liked using a 2nd large installed HD [for backing up Docs &
storage]

this compressed "image" sounds interesting

for example: if my main disk failed, what would i do?
1. shut off
2. disconnect HD 1

3. will it automatically recognise the 2nd HD as the "Main" now,
or do i have to go into the Bios and change a HD setting?

No it won't automatically recognize it as the Master drive. That is done by
changing the boot order in the BIOS or changing the jumpers on the drive and
changing which adaptor on the IDE cable it's attached to.

4. and how does this compressed Image become usable on boot-up?
[some of this may be explained with the image software i suppose]

You follow the instructions with the software that made the image to restore
the image to another drive.

 

[Jonny]

hi all,

i have a 2nd hard-drive on a 3 year old Dell desktop with Win XP home

i was wondering how i might prepare my 2nd hard-drive for an emergency
install,
in case my 1st hard drive ever started failing, or gave out

is there an simple way to prepare for this possibility?
i've changed HD jumpers/pins in the past
i just don't want to be caught without at least one good HD

my Dell came with an operating system Re-installation CD

could it be as simple as changing jumpers [2nd HD to main HD]
and putting in the Re-installation CD?

thanks
waterboy

The only safe way is to disconnect the failing disk. As your machine
probably uses cable select, no jumpers need to be changed, but just to be
safe, put the end of the cable on the good drive.

Don't pussyfoot around about this. Assuming the hard drive is ide, the ide
spec requires the master be on the end of the cable. The slave hard drive
cannot exist without a master per this spec also. So, moving the end of the
ide ribbon cable to the 2nd hard drive when the first hard drive is no
longer used is required for proper timing operation. The ide ribbon cable
with an unused end can cause reflections to the ide device on the middle
connector. Whether jumpered CS or not is of no consequence regarding to the
above.