Cloning an XP disk

[Jim Parker]

I just bought a new 120 GB Maxtor hard drive to replace my
40GB, also a Maxtor. Put the new hard drive in as slave
and booted the Maxtor setup CD and followed the menus to
set it up as a replacement drive. It tried to copy the old
to the new but claimed there was an error in the source
(old) drive and quit after about 2% and suggested that I
run scandisk and defragment the source disk and try again.

So I did that (well, it was really chkdsk not scandisk)
and Windows claimed no errors found but I tried again and
again it failed. So I installed it as a second hard drive
and tried to xcopy from one to the other but I got either
sharing violations or access denied errors. I tried
various other copy mechanism (Partition Magic and Drive
Image) but they failed. I suspect that Partition Magic is
just too old (version 4.0) and doesn't support the NTFS
file system version used by XP. Drive Image (also version
4.0) wouldn't start. It claimed the disk manager was
installed on the new drive but wasn't running so I should
boot with the space bar held down and wait for a prompt to
put in the boot disk. That didn't work.

So, how can I copy my XP Professional installation from
the 40 GB drive to the 120 GB drive?

Thanks
Jim

 

[Willit]

The demo version should do it fine. But it if you like
it , I backup with it every week to my slave. does 5g in 6
min with 3 clicks.

Have you ever spent ten hours putting all your OS,
programs and settings back in and any Data files you have
created with them. If you downloaded them you will not
have a key to install or a way to get a replacement copy.

A copy is a copy. A Image is a image. A
clone/copy/backup is bootable, it has everything your
original drive has,OS, Programs, Email, Address Book,
Data and Registry. You can update it at anytime, any part
of it. Casper XP does that from the windows platform. I
have had Image files for years, the problem with them is
it's a whole file. You cannot make changes to them, you
cannot access them, you have to restore them. Some will
boot some won't. A image file cannot be written to a
smalled disk unless you can change the partition size to
fit the smaller drive. Lets say you have a 40gb main HDD
with 10 gb of data, you cannot put a image of it on a 20gb
disk. If you're up-grading to a larger drive wouldn't it
be nice to have the old drive for a back-up

I have all the backup programs made I think, Drive Image,
Ghost ( 3 versions ), Drive Wizard, Copy Commander, Drive
Back , TrueImage etc. I mentioned Casper-XP because
someone in here made a post about it , I said what the
heck, just another $39.00, I love it. It works so easy and
I have made 30 copies and they all booted, proof enough
for me.
Buy a second Hard drive $69.00 these days and a good
copy/backup program to make a clone. XP-Casper is one.

http://www.fssdev.com/products/ $ 39.00 make the clone
and then un-plug the power to the drive if you want.

Want to test drive a Demo for 30 days. It has some
features disabled.

http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/3000-2248-10161152.html?
tag=lst-1-8

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Hi Jim,

Worst-comes-to-worst:

Install the new drive as a slave. Run the files and settings tranfer wizard
(fastwiz) and place the file on the new drive. Shutdown, remove the old
drive and set the new one up as the primary. Boot up with the WinXP CD and
start a new installation - do not format. When finished, run the fastwiz and
import the backed up file from the old system.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers aka "Nutcase" MS-MVP - Win9x
Windows isn't rocket science! That's my other hobby!

Associate Expert - WinXP - Expert Zone

 

[Alex Nichol]

So I did that (well, it was really chkdsk not scandisk)
and Windows claimed no errors found but I tried again and
again it failed. So I installed it as a second hard drive
and tried to xcopy from one to the other but I got either
sharing violations or access denied errors. I tried
various other copy mechanism (Partition Magic and Drive
Image) but they failed. I suspect that Partition Magic is
just too old (version 4.0) and doesn't support the NTFS
file system version used by XP. Drive Image (also version
4.0) wouldn't start

Those are hopelessly too old - you need at least PM 7.0 and preferably
8.0. And XCopy will not copy all the needed files

What I use is BootIT NG, from http://www.BootitNG.com ($35 shareware -
30 day full functional trial)

Download, to its own folder, extract from the zip, run the bootitng to
make a boot floppy.

With the new drive plugged in as slave/secondary, boot the floppy,
Cancel Install, entering maintenance, then click on Partition work.
Highlight your C:,Copy, then on left select the new drive (HD1) and
Paste.

Now click on 'View MBR' and in it highlight the entry for this new C
partition and click the 'Set Active' Click 'Write Standard MBR' and
Apply. Also make a check that this partition is in the same place in
the table as it was if you do a View MBR on the old one - if not use the
Up or down to correct it.

Close out, swap the disks to make the new one the one that boots, and
reboot into XP.