wabbleknee said:
I have a WinXP Media center SP3, OEM desktop from HP . The HDD is
making some noise and want to change out the HDD. On this HDD there is
D: Recovery partition and I want to copy it to a new HDD or DVD. How do
I go about doing that?? make an image of D: or?? Its hidden can't see
exactly what is there.
Some disk companies provide software for download.
For example, Seagate has DiskWizard, which is a
rebadged copy of some Acronis software. The manual
is here. See Chapter 10 on page 43, for copying
the old drive, to a new Seagate drive. (As long as
one drive is a Seagate, you can use the software.)
http://www.seagate.com/support/discwizard/dw_ug.en.pdf
On page 47, it says:
As a rule, "as is" transfers not recommended as they leave
much unallocated space on the new disc. Using the "as is"
method, Seagate DiscWizard transfers unsupported and damaged
file systems.
What that means is, if file systems other than NTFS and
FAT32 are involved, they can still be copied, by
doing a sector by sector copy. I interpret their statement
to mean, if you don't attempt to resize partitions (which
requires an understanding of each file system involved), then
the tool will do a sector by sector copy. And that
should be enough to solve most of your problems (hidden partition).
The only thing that won't handle, is an HPA or Host Protected
Area.
General purpose software can't deal with HPA (host protected area)
tricks. I'm only aware of one small system builder, who used
dirty tricks to store their recovery console. It's almost
impossible to copy the disk, in that case. Most of the
recovery partitions on machines now, are a bit easier to
copy than that. So I wouldn't expect you to have a problem.
Note that some disk manufacturing companies, provide almost
no downloadable software for their customers. It pays to
check the website *before* you buy, to make sure the
software you need to make a copy, is available.
*******
If you're curious about the partitions on your old drive, then
download this Windows tool.
ftp://ftp.symantec.com/public/english_us_canada/tools/pq/utilities/PTEDIT32.zip
That tool was part of Partition Magic at one time. It displays
the four primary partition entries for your hard drive. You
can see an example of the information displayed here. It's
all numbers, whereas Disk Management in Windows is nice
graphics. (Don't try and run Disk Management at the
same time this is running. And yes, you can edit
the partition table with this, but don't try it unless
you know what you're doing.)
http://www.vistax64.com/attachments...n-partiton-recovery-dell-xps-420-dell-tbl.gif
The partition types are what you're interested in. There is
a table of values here, but such a table is pretty hard to
keep up to date.
http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/partitions/partition_types-1.html
The second partition (07 type) is an ordinary NTFS partition.
The "DE" was something cooked up by Dell and is non standard.
The "DB" is something similar. The "DE" and "DB" things are
probably things I'd copy sector by sector (at least, if I
wasn't otherwise able to understand them).
According to that partition types web page, "DE" is actually
a FAT file system. But Windows probably won't touch it normally,
as the "DE" may not be recognized as something Windows should
be playing with. It implies, that something changes the partition
type field, just before the partition is mounted. It is possible,
if you were to change the DE value to 0E, it might be recognized,
but there is an element of danger with just "trying stuff"
There is one utility I know of, which you can point at a
partition, and it will tell you the file system type. It
is called "disktype" and is available as an installable
option on some Linux LiveCDs (you download it off the
Internet). I'm not aware of anything that comes close to
doing the job that this tiny utility does. It's too bad there
isn't a Windows port yet (maybe Cygwin, if you wanted to set that
up). If you could positively verify what the actual file system
type was (on those "fake" partition declarations), then you'd be
better able to make them readable. If they're not readable, a
sector by sector copy will ensure you get the contents
of the disk properly.
If it turns out all your partition types are standard ones,
then it won't be quite as tough to deal with the data.
(This is the site maintained for the development of that tool.
It's easiest to boot a Linux LiveCD and use the package manager
to download and install this software (install in RAM, until the
session ends). Installing Cygwin so you can install that tool,
sounds like a lot more work.)
http://disktype.sourceforge.net/
*******
For the sake of completeness, the "dd" disk dump program, can
also be used to clone disks. But copying data in Windows has
problems when copying the C: partition, as some files are
"busy" and can't be copied. Using that Seagate program,
should take care of all that for you. (This program is a port
of the "dd" which originated in the Unix/Linux world. It has
a few rough edges, but I like it for cloning jobs. But I can't
copy C: with it right now.)
http://www.chrysocome.net/dd
It *is* possible to copy C: while the OS is running. But
the technique used by this program, isn't very common yet.
It's easier to just boot another OS and do the copying
instead, which is what some of the backup tools do. I'm only
mentioning this program, to demonstrate that it can be done.
I've actually used this, and it works. A very neat piece of work.
You run the resultant "output file" in Virtual PC.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-ca/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx
Paul
