Help please, on replacing the main HD.

[Steve Lee]

I need to replace one of my hard drives, which currently has a C:, D:
and an E: partition. It's an IBM Deskstar and it's starting to make a
few click noise and high pitched wheezing noise that's making me
nervious, even though I've only had it for a couple of years. I also
have a 2nd HD in this computer, but I don't need to replace that at
all.

The HD & partition info is as follows:
HD 0 (IBM Deskstar 40GB):
C: partition is 7GB big and 4.5GB is used up. This is where Windows
XP Pro is installed and has all the downloaded and usually the smaller
programs installed.

D: partition is 32GB big and has all the programs installed off of
CDs, such as Office XP, Visual Studio .NET, Photoshop CS, Flash MX
2004, MOHAA and etc. So these are much bigger programs than the ones
installed on C:

E: partition is close to 1GB and _was_ used as dedicated swap
partition in XP Pro. But when I added a 2nd HD, I moved the swap
partition to that and now, the E: partition sits empty, never being
used at all.

HD 1 (Seagate Barracuda 120GB):
F: partition is about 110GB big and this is the partition to which I
download all my things. It's used purely for storage before I burn
them. I don't need to replace this HD at all.

I: partition is where I moved the swap partition to from E: For some
reason, XP Pro designated this swap partition as I: and named my
burner and my CD-ROM as G: and H: respectively.

I should also mention that both HDs are ATA100 are running off of a
Adaptec's PCI ATA100 controller card.

What I wish to do are the following and was wondering if someone would
be kind enough to point me in the right direction to learn how to go
about doing that:
1. Replace HD 0, but restore it exactly the same as the old drive,
including any XP Pro settings/registry tweaks I had, all the apps and
their settings/configurations
2. Get rid of partition E: somehow.

I guess basically, I'm trying to find a way to replace the HD, but be
able to make a complete and exact copy of the old drive so that I
don't have to reinstall every single program I had on it.

I've heard of Norton Ghost and Power Image or something or rather
programs that are supposed to be able to make a complete image of your
HD, then restore it somehow after a clean reinstall.

So, if someone knows a good online resource where it provides detailed
explanations or instructions on as to how I can achieve that, I'd
really appreciate it. Thanks for your time courtesy.

 

[Adam S]

I've heard of Norton Ghost and Power Image or something or rather
programs that are supposed to be able to make a complete image of your
HD, then restore it somehow after a clean reinstall.

I have used Ghost on many machines. It can make an image of your hard drive
or partition into one BIG file. You then burn this BIG file onto a CD.

Boot new machine with empty HDD using a boot disk. Insert a disk with Ghost
program on it and restore the image to the disk or partition. Then remove
book disk and CD and the machine should be an exact copy of your old one.

Ghost can compress your files so that they take up less room in that BIG
file. It works best when coping partition to partition if both the original
partition and the new partition are the same size.

You can use Ghost to make its file on a second hard disk and restore from
that as long as you can see it in the booted mode when restoring, (ie don't
have it on an NTFS drive and then wonder where it has gone booting to DOS).


1. I would Ghost your C drive to a CD, then phisically remove all the hard
drives.

2. Install the new drive, partition it and use Ghost to put back the C
image.

3. Reconnect the original drive as a slave and copy the old D to the new D.

4. Remove the original hard drive and reinstall your original second drive
as the slave.

5. It should now be as it was but with a new drive.

If it hasn't worked then your data is still safe on the original drive for
you to try again. You shold find that you have a working machine after stage
2.

Or just format your new disk and install Windows and all your programs
again, it will run faster and you won't spent time putting stuff back on
that you don't need, the downside is it takes ages to do!

Adam S

 

[Hokey Pokey]

On Mon, 23 Feb 2004 16:16:21 -0000, "Adam S"

[snipped excellent and much appreciated instructions]

Or just format your new disk and install Windows and all your programs
again, it will run faster and you won't spent time putting stuff back on
that you don't need, the downside is it takes ages to do!

Adam S

Adam, thanks for taking the time to provide a detailed instructions
for me. I really apprecaite it.

Just one question, since I have my HD running off of a PCI ATA-100
controller card, is this something that might pose a problem for Ghost
or would it able to recognize it and handle it? Should I connect my
HD to the MB and do it that way? Thanks.

 

[Adam S]

[snipped excellent and much appreciated instructions]

Or just format your new disk and install Windows and all your programs
again, it will run faster and you won't spent time putting stuff back on
that you don't need, the downside is it takes ages to do!

Adam S

Adam, thanks for taking the time to provide a detailed instructions
for me. I really apprecaite it.

Just one question, since I have my HD running off of a PCI ATA-100
controller card, is this something that might pose a problem for Ghost
or would it able to recognize it and handle it? Should I connect my
HD to the MB and do it that way? Thanks.

I've no idea if Ghost works with PCI ATA controller cards, I've never worked
on a PC with one of these boards in, I would try it and if it didn't work
then connect the drive directly to the motherboard. If you boot your PC
using a boot disk can you see your hard drive connected to the PCI
controller? if you can then I would have thought it should be OK. Until you
format your original hard drive your data should be safe.

I spent several years as support on 100's of PCs for a large company, and
I've built more PCs from components than I care to think about, but I've
never used a PCI ATA card yet. The closest I've come to them is SCSI RAID
cards on some large servers, but we didn't Ghost them (2500GB stripped
drives are probably a bit too big for this).

One thing I have learnt with PCs is you can never tell 100% if something is
going to work until you try.

Adam S