Hard Drive Replacement Question

[jcage]

Hi, I have a Dell Dimension 8400 with a Western Digital HDD that's a
few years old. It has XPproSP2 on it, all as my C drive. In an
effort to replace it, I'm wanting to install another hard drive as D
in an available internal bay, and hopefully do a mirror image of my
existing C to that new D hard drive.

Following this, I'd remove and retire my old C drive and basically
doing a rename of D to C, placing me pretty much where I am now but
with a new hard drive.

What software package would be best to use for this? TIA

 

[Nil]

Hi, I have a Dell Dimension 8400 with a Western Digital HDD that's a
few years old. It has XPproSP2 on it, all as my C drive. In an
effort to replace it, I'm wanting to install another hard drive as D
in an available internal bay, and hopefully do a mirror image of my
existing C to that new D hard drive.

Following this, I'd remove and retire my old C drive and basically
doing a rename of D to C, placing me pretty much where I am now but
with a new hard drive.

No need to rename anything. Clone your hard drive, shut the computer
down, remove the old drive and move the new drive to its position on
the cable. Make sure the jumpers are set correctly. Start the computer
up again, and if all went well, you should be back on the road again.

What software package would be best to use for this? TIA

Most new hard disks come with a utility to do this. It will either be
in the box or available for download from the manufacturer's support
site.

 

[peter]

Acronis True Image
http://www.acronis.com/

peter

 

[Steve Hayes]

Hi, I have a Dell Dimension 8400 with a Western Digital HDD that's a
few years old. It has XPproSP2 on it, all as my C drive. In an
effort to replace it, I'm wanting to install another hard drive as D
in an available internal bay, and hopefully do a mirror image of my
existing C to that new D hard drive.

Following this, I'd remove and retire my old C drive and basically
doing a rename of D to C, placing me pretty much where I am now but
with a new hard drive.

What software package would be best to use for this? TIA

Acronis.

 

[jcage]

Thanks very much for all the replies, everyone. I'm looking at a
"Diablotek EN3525D Hard Drive Dock - 2.5"/3.5" SATA to USB 2.0", for
the purposes of doing a clone and then removing and replacing my
internal HDD. Any experience with one of these? Thanks, John

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Hi, I have a Dell Dimension 8400 with a Western Digital HDD that's a
few years old. It has XPproSP2 on it, all as my C drive. In an
effort to replace it, I'm wanting to install another hard drive as D
in an available internal bay, and hopefully do a mirror image of my
existing C to that new D hard drive.

Following this, I'd remove and retire my old C drive and basically
doing a rename of D to C, placing me pretty much where I am now but
with a new hard drive.

What software package would be best to use for this? TIA

XXClone is pretty good, and it's free. Another option is BootIt Next
Generation (BING), which is shareware. The difference between them is
that XXClone copies files over while you're inside Windows, while BING
requires you to boot into a bootable CD and do it from outside Windows.
Both can be searched on Google.

Each has its advantages and disadvantages. BING would likely be faster
at the copying part, but you'll have to do the additional step of
resizing your partition to fit the new bigger hard drive. XXClone would
be slower since it's working within Windows, but that will let you keep
using Windows while it works. Also XXClone will be able to copy between
a FAT and an NTFS formatted drive without any issues, whereas with BING
you'll end up with exactly the same filesystem as the original. Also
XXClone doesn't need you to have the exact same size of partition to
copy to.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Thanks very much for all the replies, everyone. I'm looking at a
"Diablotek EN3525D Hard Drive Dock - 2.5"/3.5" SATA to USB 2.0", for
the purposes of doing a clone and then removing and replacing my
internal HDD. Any experience with one of these? Thanks, John

USB drives will be much slower than an internal SATA connection. You
don't have any room left inside your case for a second hard disk?

Yousuf Khan

 

[Brian Matthews]

XXClone is pretty good, and it's free. Another option is BootIt Next
Generation (BING), which is shareware. The difference between them is
that XXClone copies files over while you're inside Windows, while BING
requires you to boot into a bootable CD and do it from outside Windows.
Both can be searched on Google.

Each has its advantages and disadvantages. BING would likely be faster
at the copying part, but you'll have to do the additional step of
resizing your partition to fit the new bigger hard drive. XXClone would
be slower since it's working within Windows, but that will let you keep
using Windows while it works. Also XXClone will be able to copy between
a FAT and an NTFS formatted drive without any issues, whereas with BING
you'll end up with exactly the same filesystem as the original. Also
XXClone doesn't need you to have the exact same size of partition to
copy to.

Yousuf Khan

I don't know about BING, but I've been using XXClone for years and
it's saved my butt on a few occasions. It was called XXCopy back in
the Windows '98 days and that program worked well too. Just my 2¢
worth. : )

 

[Yousuf Khan]

I don't know about BING, but I've been using XXClone for years and
it's saved my butt on a few occasions. It was called XXCopy back in
the Windows '98 days and that program worked well too. Just my 2¢
worth. : )

Yeah, as far as I can tell, XXClone is just a new frontend to XXCopy.

Yousuf Khan

 

[jcage]

USB drives will be much slower than an internal SATA connection. You
don't have any room left inside your case for a second hard disk?

        Yousuf Khan

Would this be as simple as temporarily removing my CD drive (to get
bay space) and if I have the spare SATA connection, making that
connection and configuring the hard drive in the bios for cloning ???

Thanks,
John

 

[ElJerid]

Hi, I have a Dell Dimension 8400 with a Western Digital HDD that's a
few years old. It has XPproSP2 on it, all as my C drive. In an
effort to replace it, I'm wanting to install another hard drive as D
in an available internal bay, and hopefully do a mirror image of my
existing C to that new D hard drive.

Following this, I'd remove and retire my old C drive and basically
doing a rename of D to C, placing me pretty much where I am now but
with a new hard drive.

What software package would be best to use for this? TIA

As said before, Acronis seems the best tool for cloning, however, it's not
always so simple.
I had to do this job recently and it failed. I tried XXClone and it failed
also. I believe the reason of the failures is that I had to clone an (old)
PATA drive to a new SATA drive (and this is probably your case), but I' m
not sure about this. No way to do a direct clone from one disc to the other.
Finally I succeeded by using another method with Acronis. I created an image
of the C drive on an EXTERNAL USB disc. Then I removed the C disc and
replaced it with the new SATA drive. Booting from the Acronis boot CD (you
have to create it before), I then restored the image to the new drive,
WITHOUT restoring the MBR (option in Acronis). After e new reboot, the new
disc gets the C letter and everything works perfectly. You could then use
any partition manager software (I use Easeus) to eventually create new
partitions.
Hope this helps in case the standard method doesn' t work.

 

[Steve Hayes]

As said before, Acronis seems the best tool for cloning, however, it's not
always so simple.
I had to do this job recently and it failed. I tried XXClone and it failed
also. I believe the reason of the failures is that I had to clone an (old)
PATA drive to a new SATA drive (and this is probably your case), but I' m
not sure about this. No way to do a direct clone from one disc to the other.
Finally I succeeded by using another method with Acronis. I created an image
of the C drive on an EXTERNAL USB disc. Then I removed the C disc and
replaced it with the new SATA drive. Booting from the Acronis boot CD (you
have to create it before), I then restored the image to the new drive,
WITHOUT restoring the MBR (option in Acronis). After e new reboot, the new
disc gets the C letter and everything works perfectly. You could then use
any partition manager software (I use Easeus) to eventually create new
partitions.
Hope this helps in case the standard method doesn' t work.

I did something similar.

I had a 30 Gig C: drive, and a 40 gGig drive with D: E: F: and G: FAT
partitions.

I wanted a bigger drive, so bought a 500 Gig one, divided it into four
(bigger) partitions, formatted them as NTFS, and then restored the data and
programs from an external USB hard drive where I had backed them up with
Acronis.

They worked perfectly -- the programs installed on the E: and F: partitions
worked without having to be reinstalled.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Would this be as simple as temporarily removing my CD drive (to get
bay space) and if I have the spare SATA connection, making that
connection and configuring the hard drive in the bios for cloning ???

Sure, you could try that. If you're really that hard up for space, then
you may not even really have to permanently install the extra disk. Just
open up the case, and leave it open. From there plug the extra hard disk
into any spare data and power cables while leaving the hard disk hanging
or propped up outside the case. Then you'll be able to do the transfer
over. After that, you can just replace the old hard disk with the new one.

Yousuf Khan

 

[mm]

Sure, you could try that. If you're really that hard up for space, then
you may not even really have to permanently install the extra disk. Just
open up the case, and leave it open. From there plug the extra hard disk
into any spare data and power cables while leaving the hard disk hanging
or propped up outside the case. Then you'll be able to do the transfer
over.

Does it matter if the OS and all that other other data is recorded
while the drive has one orientation, like flat, and then the drive is
mounted permanently and used in another orientation, like pointed
down?

 

[mm]

(Of course, if I made any mistakes, please correct me. )

Not only that, but if you buy the pro-version, forty dollars I think,
you can do incremental and differential backups also, which take a lot
less time than full backups. Of course it takes more time to restore
if that's necessary, but all in all, I expect a big savings in time,
because you can backup every day, but you'll only have to restore
every year or four, or you'll change hd's before you ever do?

XXCLone can do this because it's a file-by-file copy, with whatever is
needed to be bootable added I guess. It's not a disk image where the
boundary between one file and another isn't even noticed. This is
why, like you say, it can change file formats.

I don't know about BING, but I've been using XXClone for years and
it's saved my butt on a few occasions. It was called XXCopy back in
the Windows '98 days and that program worked well too. Just my 2¢
worth. : )

Well, close. XXCOPY is still alive and well and free and being used
with XP and Vista and I think it works with 7 too, and it has loads
and loads and loads of options, far far beyond XCopy or Windows copy.

XXCOPY has a /Clone option, which is the same as several other options
together so that the sets of files at both places is made identical,
but the destination is not bootable.

Of course that's not the same as XXCLone which makes the destination
copy bootable. And XXClone only has 3 options, full, incremental,
and differential, I think those are their names.


What XXClone can't do I learned on their Yahoo list is create a clone
that will run on hardware that needs different esssential drivers. I'm
still a little unsure of what that means. If the sound card is
different, I'm sure XP and above will just ask for a driver for the
new sound card. But iiuc some software is needed to run the
harddrive interface, the HD adaptor? and if that has changed, because
one has a different mobo I guess???, Windows won't be able to run??
and won't be able to request what it needs to work. Is that right?

FTR, I'm not actually using XXClone, and what I need now is something
to clone my HD for another computer.

 

[Patok]

Does it matter if the OS and all that other other data is recorded
while the drive has one orientation, like flat, and then the drive is
mounted permanently and used in another orientation, like pointed
down?

No.

 

[Jungle Jim]

Hi, I have a Dell Dimension 8400 with a Western Digital HDD that's a
few years old. It has XPproSP2 on it, all as my C drive. In an
effort to replace it, I'm wanting to install another hard drive as D
in an available internal bay, and hopefully do a mirror image of my
existing C to that new D hard drive.

Following this, I'd remove and retire my old C drive and basically
doing a rename of D to C, placing me pretty much where I am now but
with a new hard drive.

What software package would be best to use for this? TIA

Something like Norton Ghost or Acronis TrueImage will be quite adequate
- a google search will turn up either.

 

[Dominique]

Agreed.
The spindle of the drive can be vertical (ie circuit board down), or
inclined to any angle up to 90 degrees.
They should NOT be run upside-down though!

Not true

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