Swap HD's

[JAX]

I am running XP pro on an internal WD 80 gig HD. I have a second, matching,
HD in an external USB box for backups. If I were to copy the system
partition, "C"drive, from my internal drive to the first partition on my USB
drive, via WD's data lifeguard, in the event of a failure of the internal
drive, would I be able to remove the internal drive and replace it with the
drive from the USB box and have the system boot from it?

TIA, JAX

 

[DL]

You need a specific app eg Norton Ghost to copy a sys.
An app that simply copies data files is no good

 

[JAX]

Thank you DL.
It is my understanding that WD's software is intended to copy the entire
contents of a drive and make the partition bootable. I can always swap the
drives out and see if it works. I was hoping to get a response from someone
who had tried what I propose so as to know if there were any special
conditions because of the drive having been loaded via USB.

Cheers, JAX

 

[R. McCarty]

Your BIOS has to support booting from USB devices. XP doesn't
allow installs to removable drives. I would guess that a Image from
C:\ placed on a USB and designated as active would probably run.
That is providing the BIOS boot support and device order is set up
properly.

 

[JAX]

Thank you R,

My intention is to install the drive from the USB box to the drive "0"
position on the primary IDE cable. USB support would not be involved. Drive
letter confusion, etc., is the concern. I will try it and see. The only
problem with experimenting with it is, it's damn near impossible to remove
the drive from the USB box, It's a tight fit.

Cheers, JAX

 

[Art]

JAX:
There's no reason that you couldn't do what you propose, i.e., remove the
cloned drive from your USB external drive and connect it as an internal
drive replacing your current internal drive. The OS will see it as your C:
drive and it will be bootable. But may I suggest a more straightforward and
presumably a more practical approach? Use a disk cloning program such as
Symantec's Norton Ghost program (making sure it's the 2003 version and
updated to the current 2003.793 build) to clone your internal disk to the
USB external drive. Using a cloning program like Norton Ghost performs the
cloning process far faster than the disk manufacturer's utility program and
does so in a more simple and straightforward manner. Since you intend to use
the external drive as a backup, I assume you'll be performing the cloning
operation from time to time. There are other disk cloning programs available
and I assume they function as effectively as Ghost, however, my experience
has been mainly with that latter program.

Ideally, it would be more desirable if the USB external drive was bootable
but I've yet to successfully boot to an external drive in an XP environment.

Art

 

[JAX]

Hi Art,

My idea is to simply have a bootable XP drive with all updates and my
preferences ready to go on the 2nd drive. That is to say, power,sounds,etc.
already configured. At this point, I have the OS configurations the way I
want and only want to duplicate that to the 2nd drive. It is not my
intention to constantly image the entire drive. The second drive is
partitioned with one partition that I call "Keep". I store my files and
downloaded information on it for backup.

It only takes "split seconds" to copy a file to the 2nd drive for backup.
You have reinforced my thoughts about the possibility of what I propose. I
have already copied the "C" drive to the 1st partition on the 2nd drive. I
guess, I will just "pry" the 2nd drive out of the USB case and see if it
works the way I think it should.

Thank you, JAX

 

[JAX]

I see no way to simply boot to the USB drive with my MB. In BIOS, there is
an option to boot from other devices but, it doesn't seem to recognize USB.
Oh well.

JAX

 

[Alex Nichol]

It is my understanding that WD's software is intended to copy the entire
contents of a drive and make the partition bootable. I can always swap the
drives out and see if it works.

I just don't know that WD software. The principle of using drive
cloning software (as opposed to file oriented copying) and then
plugging the backup drive in place of the original is sound. You will
need to make sure that the process includes writing MBR code to make the
drive (not just the partition) bootable and marking the partition as
active

 

[JAX]

Thank you Alex.

I looking at the files that were copied to the USB drive, I think it's good
to go. The only reason I hesitate to put it to the "acid" test is, the USB
box is designed in such a way that damage to its circuit board is possible
when removing the drive. I should have looked at the box before I bought it.

Cheers, JAX