Feasibility of having "spare" HDD with Windows XP home?

[John Selby]

I would be grateful for advice on the feasibility of having a
"spare" HDD containing a cloned image of the main HDD, sitting
inside a computer (operating on Windows XP home) but not
connected.

Its sole purpose would be to act as insurance in case of any
problems affecting the main HDD, the idea being that the computer
could be put back into operation very quickly simply by removing
a side cover, swapping over the HDD leads, detecting the new HDD
in bios if necessary, and starting up.

I have done this previously with Windows 98, but am unsure of how
Windows XP (home) would behave on detecting that the HDD had
changed.

By the way, there's method behind this apparent madness. I am
trying to make sure that computers used by elderly students for
tuition purposes are not put out of action for lengthy periods by
"accidents". It would be nice to think that if something happens
part way through a class, a problem computer can be back in
business within, say, 5 minutes simply by swapping over two
leads. With HDD's being relatively cheap now, this could be
quite affordable.

I was thinking of making two FAT 32 partitions on a new drive,
then using something like Drive Image to make a compressed image
of the single partition on the main drive, and copying it to
partition No 2 on the new drive, then "restoring" this image to
partition No 1 on the new drive which would be made bootable.

I think the single partition on the existing drive is NTFS, but
assume this wouldn't matter when making an image file with Drive
Image?

I prefer FAT 32 because I don't know too much about NTFS, and
like the idea of being able to use existing DOS tools on a drive
if necesary.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks, John Selby

 

[jaeger]

I have done this previously with Windows 98, but am unsure of how
Windows XP (home) would behave on detecting that the HDD had
changed.

How would XP know the HD had changed? The cloned drive doesn't know
it's a clone. That's the whole purpose of drive images.

 

[Rod Speed]

I would be grateful for advice on the feasibility of
having a "spare" HDD containing a cloned image of
the main HDD, sitting inside a computer (operating
on Windows XP home) but not connected.

Its sole purpose would be to act as insurance in case of
any problems affecting the main HDD, the idea being that
the computer could be put back into operation very quickly
simply by removing a side cover, swapping over the HDD leads,
detecting the new HDD in bios if necessary, and starting up.

I have done this previously with Windows 98,
but am unsure of how Windows XP (home) would
behave on detecting that the HDD had changed.

It wont even notice if you are careful to unplug the clone
drive immediately after the clone, before XP boots.
When you boot off that drive later, it'll never even notice.

By the way, there's method behind this apparent madness.

Its not madness.

I am trying to make sure that computers used by
elderly students for tuition purposes are not put
out of action for lengthy periods by "accidents".

Thats fine and thats done quite a bit.

It would be nice to think that if something happens
part way through a class, a problem computer can
be back in business within, say, 5 minutes simply
by swapping over two leads. With HDD's being
relatively cheap now, this could be quite affordable.
Yep.

I was thinking of making two FAT 32 partitions on a new drive,
then using something like Drive Image to make a compressed
image of the single partition on the main drive, and copying it to
partition No 2 on the new drive, then "restoring" this image to
partition No 1 on the new drive which would be made bootable.

You dont need to do it that way. You can just clone the entire
original drive, no need to bother with partitions or images.

I think the single partition on the existing drive
is NTFS, but assume this wouldn't matter when
making an image file with Drive Image?
Correct.

I prefer FAT 32 because I don't know too much
about NTFS, and like the idea of being able to
use existing DOS tools on a drive if necesary.

Yeah, thats the main advantage with FAT32.

 

[Michael Cecil]

How would XP know the HD had changed? The cloned drive doesn't know
it's a clone. That's the whole purpose of drive images.

You don't think harddrives have serial numbers? They do and W2K/XP
tracks the drives by those numbers. That's why you don't leave in an
old boot drive the first time you boot up a system with a newly cloned
drive, else Windows will see the old drive and try to boot from it
still.

 

[Eric Gisin]

Win XP does something different from 2000 with cloned drives, so make sure
your cloned drive works.

If your main drive is infected by virus or worm, it is not a good idea to use
your clone drive. Restore the main drive from the clone so that you can repeat
this.

In a classroom environment you don't use backup drives (unless they are
usb2/firewire), you use your server. You have bootable floppy/cdr that can
backup/restore over the network.

| I would be grateful for advice on the feasibility of having a
| "spare" HDD containing a cloned image of the main HDD, sitting
| inside a computer (operating on Windows XP home) but not
| connected.
|
| Its sole purpose would be to act as insurance in case of any
| problems affecting the main HDD, the idea being that the computer
| could be put back into operation very quickly simply by removing
| a side cover, swapping over the HDD leads, detecting the new HDD
| in bios if necessary, and starting up.
|
| I have done this previously with Windows 98, but am unsure of how
| Windows XP (home) would behave on detecting that the HDD had
| changed.
| ...

 

[John Selby]

snip

You dont need to do it that way. You can just clone the entire
original drive, no need to bother with partitions or images.

Thanks for your comments Rod, and to others who offered advice.

I'm a bit confused though - it seems to me that I couldn't make
an "exact clone" if the original HDD is NTFS and the "cloned"
version is FAT32, though I assume this wouldn't matter.

I'm not sure how to make a bootable clone of a Win XP drive.
I've heard of people using a freeware programme called XXCopy for
cloning drives but I understand it has to be used with Windows
running if it is desired to retain the relationship between long
and short filenames, and not sure if this would cause any
problems under Windows XP

Also not sure how to make a copied drive bootable, as I recall
reading somewhere that the procedure is different with Windows XP
(ie the command sys c: used from a DOS disk won't work??).

If anyone can refer me to a procedure for making a FAT 32 clone
of a Windows XP HDD and making it bootable, that would be great.

TIA

John Selby

 

[J.Clarke]

snip

You dont need to do it that way. You can just clone the entire
original drive, no need to bother with partitions or images.

Thanks for your comments Rod, and to others who offered advice.

I'm a bit confused though - it seems to me that I couldn't make
an "exact clone" if the original HDD is NTFS and the "cloned"
version is FAT32, though I assume this wouldn't matter.

I'm not sure how to make a bootable clone of a Win XP drive.
I've heard of people using a freeware programme called XXCopy for
cloning drives but I understand it has to be used with Windows
running if it is desired to retain the relationship between long
and short filenames, and not sure if this would cause any
problems under Windows XP

Also not sure how to make a copied drive bootable, as I recall
reading somewhere that the procedure is different with Windows XP
(ie the command sys c: used from a DOS disk won't work??).

If anyone can refer me to a procedure for making a FAT 32 clone
of a Windows XP HDD and making it bootable, that would be great.[/QUOTE]

Get Ghost or Drive Image and RTFM.