A
Anna
My hd is failing just received a new one in the mail from dell
today. What is the best way to clone my new hd I don't want to spend hours
installing all of the programs. Also is there any preparation that I need
to do to the new hd?
Thnak you
angel:
:
Probably the most practical way is to clone the contents of your old drive
using a disk imaging program such as Symantec's Norton Ghost or
Acronis True Image. But if you don't want to incur the expense of
purchasing one of those programs (although they can be *very* valuable for
performing future backups), virtually all HD manufacturers have
freely available a disk-cloning utility designed for their HDs.
Perhaps the replacement Dell drive already came with such a utility or you
can get it from Dell?
I assume you know how to connect & configure your new hard drive or adequate
instructions for doing so were included with your Dell drive. If you feel
uncomfortable about this I would recommend you let a professional technician
do the work. It's not terribly difficult to replace a HD, but like
everything else involving computer hardware changes, if you haven't done it
before it can be a bewildering & frustrating experience.
Anna
Anna, thanks for your help I'm not sure how to connect & configure my new
hard drive, but with a little bit of guidance or knowledge from people
like you I feel comfortable doing it. I just need a brief description how to
configure and clone my hard drive.
ty
:
angel:
I see that you're corresponding in the microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware
newsgroup with Mr. Wendell on this identical issue. So perhaps it would
best if you continue to do so in order not to get conflicting or differing
advice from me which might further confuse you because of our different
approaches.
Anna
Anna, I like you approach much better can you help.
Thank you
angel:
Please understand that in no way am I contradicting or disputing the advice
& recommendations Mr. Wendell is, or will be, providing you. I've no reason
to believe that whatever information he provides you would not be helpful to
you re this issue. But there can be multiple approaches to solving this or
that computer problem, and although each one may be a valid way of
accomplishing the desired objective, it will frequently confuse the
inexperienced user because of the differing approaches. So it's best to
follow one course of action until that time you determine that particular
approach is not a practical, workable solution to your particular problem.
Having said all that, I'm not entirely sure where to start. So let me ask
you a few questions...
case and connect the new drive to a data cable connector and power plug? If
not, would you have a friend or acquaintance to help you do this?
without the need to have initially installed both drives internally. If we
went that route, i.e., using a USBEHD to accomplish the cloning operation,
naturally we would eventually replace the old drive with the new one
following the cloning operation.
frankly, do you truly understand the import of my questions, or are they
bewildering to you? I ask that question because if they are, it may be more
desirable if you could get professional help, at least in terms of the
hardware changes and manipulations we have been discussing. So think about
that.
Now as to the disk-to-disk cloning operation...
Assuming your Dell replacement drive did not come with software to
accomplish this and no free software is available, are you agreeable to
purchasing one of the two disk imaging programs I previously mentioned, and
if so, which one?
Anna
Anna, I will be replacing my system battery as well should I do that first
and boot my computer prior to installing my hd.
Anna, No I'm not bewildered thank you for asking, my hd from dell did not
come with anything no instructions nothing I wonder if I made a mistake
buying their product. Anyway I have it now so I guess I will use it, I
guess
I will buy acronis as it is recommended in this forum as being the best.
angel:
Since your new replacement drive is a Western Digital, perhaps the most
cost-effective way to proceed is to download a program from WD (available
from their website) which will allow you to undertake the cloning operation,
i.e., copying the entire contents of your old drive to the new WD drive. But
before getting to that, you'll need to connect (temporarily) your new WD
drive.
I assume you know how to gain access to your computer's components by
removing the case's side panel - the left one as you face the computer. You
probably will also have to remove the right panel in order to eventually
permanently install the new HD, but for the moment that should not be
necessary. PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU UNPLUG YOUR AC POWER CORD BEFORE UNDERTAKING
THE FOLLOWING...
What we want to do is to connect the new drive to an available IDE data
cable (commonly called a "ribbon" cable) connector and a power plug (usually
a "Molex" plug). Note how your present drive is connected to the ribbon
cable and power plug. It will basically be the same way when you connect the
new drive. Remember that we're *temporarily* connecting the new drive; after
the cloning operation we will permanently connect it.
Your new drive will arrive (most likely) jumpered Cable Select (CS). For the
moment leave it that way; we may later have to change the jumper setting.
From your description, it would seem that you have an available IDE
connector on the cable that's presently attached to your old installed
drive. The end connector (Master) is connected to that drive and there
should be a middle connector (Slave position) on that cable that's free.
It's that connector that you will use to connect to the new drive. It's
really not important *what* IDE cable connector is attached to the new drive
for this cloning operation to come. You could even detach one of the
connectors to your optical drives and connect that to the new drive for our
purposes if it was more convenient to do so. But if there *is* a free middle
connector on the cable going to the old installed drive and it's physically
convenient to connect to the new drive, use that one.
You'll need a box or some other contraption placed just outside the case on
which to place the new hard drive after you connect it to the data cable &
power plug as described above. A cardboard shoe box is fine. You just don't
want the drive to be dangling precariously from the cable connections, so
ensure that it's propped up reasonably well.
Please review the above and see if you feel comfortable about this
installation process. If you do, then we'll go on to the actual cloning
process using the WD utility. I'll provide you with information about
downloading, installing, and using that utility to clone the contents of
your old drive to the new one.
BTW, you mention you're planning to change your motherboard's battery. Is
there some reason for this? I assume your computer is not much older than
two years or so and ordinarily a battery change shouldn't be necessary. It
won't hurt, of course, assuming you correctly install the right battery, but
why are you doing so?
Anna
angel:
If you're going to change the battery, it's probably wise to do so before we
get into the process we've been discussing. It's a possibility that the low
system battery voltage message you were getting was because of the failing
HD. May also be a "false alarm" since those system battery voltage testers
are notoriously inaccurate. But there's no harm in replacing the battery.
Just make sure the battery is specifically designed for your machine, OK?
Anna
P.S.
I'll shortly be sending you step-by-step instructions detailing the cloning
process.
angel:
Here they are...
The following instructions are for the Western Digital utility for setting
up the new drive and cloning the contents of the old drive to this new one.
But before doing so, let me say a few words about that program and my
experience with it.
I'm initially recommending this approach since your new drive is a WD and to
save you some money since the WD utility is free. But I have to tell you
that my experiences with this program (and similar ones from other HD
manufacturers) hasn't been totally positive by a long shot. Simply stated,
they don't always create bootable clones when they should be doing just
that. And it's not clear why. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. I
rarely, if ever, use these programs any more, much preferring to work with
Symantec's Norton Ghost 2003 or Acronis True Image, both of those fine
programs in my experience. The WD and similar programs are awfully slow in
the cloning process -- perhaps running at half the speed of the disk imaging
programs I mentioned. I realize that's not an important consideration for
you and other users who may be interested in creating only a one-shot clone.
But if you're going to use a disk imaging program in the future for routine
disk cloning for backup purposes, it's obviously an important consideration.
But the real problem (in my experience) is what I've previously stated about
the "crapshoot" nature of those programs in terms of consistently creating a
bootable clone.
Anyway, I guess it's worth a try in your case. The worse that can happen is
that the clone doesn't "take". And should that happen, we can discuss using
Ghost or Acronis. The setup of your drives will be the same, so the only
loss will be the time you initially spend with the WD program. Look at it as
a learning experience! So let's get started...
With both drives now connected, power up. But before doing so, make sure you
have no storage devices, e.g., jump drives, zip drives, etc., connected
*other* than the two hard drives.
1. Go to http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?cxml=n&pid=999&swid=1
and download the Data Lifeguard Tools 11 for Windows. That file is in zip
format so that you will have to unzip it using the Windows XP unzipping
feature. I assume you know how to do this, right? You right-click on the
downloaded file and select Extract All from the sub-menu. Use the Extraction
Wizard that opens to extract the contents of that file. The newly-created
folder will have the same name as the downloaded file, but without the zip
file extension.
2. In the extracted folder will be a Setup.exe file. Double-click on that
file and run the installation program which will install the program in a
Program Files\Western Digital\Data Lifeguard folder. The final screen will
have checked the "Run Data Lifeguard Now!" checkbox. Click Finish.
(You may get a message asking whether you would like to setup your new WD
drive. Click Yes).
3. The next screen will have two options for "Installation Type". Select the
first option, "Add drive as additional storage device". Click Next.
4. Select the first option for the program to create and format partition.
Click Done.
5. On the next screen, select "Drive-to-Drive Copy".
6. Select your C: drive as the Source and the new drive's drive letter
(probably D: or E
as the Destination drive. It should be easy to identify
the Destination drive from the Browse for Folder window that opens after you
click the Browse button.
7. Click Start. A confirmation message box will open stating that all files
on the destination disk will be overwritten. Click Yes to continue.
8. The cloning process begins. It will be quite lengthy depending upon the
amount of data being copied.
(After the copy (cloning) operation has finished you may get a message that
the program was unable to copy a number of files. You can click on the Next
button and see a listing of those files together with the "Reason" the
program failed to copy them. The "reason" given is nearly always "Failed to
open destination file". In most cases it's nothing to be concerned about
since the OS will ordinarily re-create any necessary files upon bootup or
when they are needed. But not always. This is why I previously queried you
about whether the contents of your source drive was corruption-free.
Whatever problems exist will simply be copied over to the new drive. So if
you clone "garbage", garbage is what you'll get.)
9. Click Done and close the program.
10. Shut down the computer and disconnect the AC power plug.
11. Disconnect your old drive from the computer by removing its data cable
connection and power plug, but *don't* physically remove that drive from the
machine just yet since we want to make sure the clone "took".
12. If the new (hopefully, cloned) drive has been jumpered to CS as we
previously discussed and it's connected to the middle connector of the IDE
ribbon cable, leave it be for the moment.
13. Reconnect your computer's power and boot up. Hopefully you'll be able to
boot up to a Desktop with no problem. If it's successful, you may get a
message to reboot. Do so.
14. Assuming all is well, in that you have a well-working bootable clone,
power off. Remove the old drive, and after disconnecting the new drive's
data cable connection, install it in place of the old drive (there's no need
to change its power plug if the plug reaches in the new drive's new
position), and connect the old drive's data cable connector (I'm assuming
it's the *end* connector on the ribbon cable) to the new drive. I'm assuming
in all this that the other two devices - your optical drives - are both
connected on the Secondary IDE channel as you previously indicated.
15. You probably will have to remove the other side panel from your
computer's case in order to access the old drive so that it can be removed
as well as installing the new drive.
I trust all this is reasonably clear to you. The process is not particularly
complicated although it might look that way from my detailed instructions.
It's just that the first time you undertake something like this it can seem
overwhelming, so I've tried to give you as much detailed information as I
think you may need. Just take it step-by-step and don't rush it.
Let me know how it all works out. Good luck.
Anna
today. What is the best way to clone my new hd I don't want to spend hours
installing all of the programs. Also is there any preparation that I need
to do to the new hd?
Thnak you
angel:
:
Probably the most practical way is to clone the contents of your old drive
using a disk imaging program such as Symantec's Norton Ghost or
Acronis True Image. But if you don't want to incur the expense of
purchasing one of those programs (although they can be *very* valuable for
performing future backups), virtually all HD manufacturers have
freely available a disk-cloning utility designed for their HDs.
Perhaps the replacement Dell drive already came with such a utility or you
can get it from Dell?
I assume you know how to connect & configure your new hard drive or adequate
instructions for doing so were included with your Dell drive. If you feel
uncomfortable about this I would recommend you let a professional technician
do the work. It's not terribly difficult to replace a HD, but like
everything else involving computer hardware changes, if you haven't done it
before it can be a bewildering & frustrating experience.
Anna
Anna, thanks for your help I'm not sure how to connect & configure my new
hard drive, but with a little bit of guidance or knowledge from people
like you I feel comfortable doing it. I just need a brief description how to
configure and clone my hard drive.
ty
:
angel:
I see that you're corresponding in the microsoft.public.windowsxp.hardware
newsgroup with Mr. Wendell on this identical issue. So perhaps it would
best if you continue to do so in order not to get conflicting or differing
advice from me which might further confuse you because of our different
approaches.
Anna
Anna, I like you approach much better can you help.
Thank you
angel:
Please understand that in no way am I contradicting or disputing the advice
& recommendations Mr. Wendell is, or will be, providing you. I've no reason
to believe that whatever information he provides you would not be helpful to
you re this issue. But there can be multiple approaches to solving this or
that computer problem, and although each one may be a valid way of
accomplishing the desired objective, it will frequently confuse the
inexperienced user because of the differing approaches. So it's best to
follow one course of action until that time you determine that particular
approach is not a practical, workable solution to your particular problem.
Having said all that, I'm not entirely sure where to start. So let me ask
you a few questions...
case and connect the new drive to a data cable connector and power plug? If
not, would you have a friend or acquaintance to help you do this?
without the need to have initially installed both drives internally. If we
went that route, i.e., using a USBEHD to accomplish the cloning operation,
naturally we would eventually replace the old drive with the new one
following the cloning operation.
frankly, do you truly understand the import of my questions, or are they
bewildering to you? I ask that question because if they are, it may be more
desirable if you could get professional help, at least in terms of the
hardware changes and manipulations we have been discussing. So think about
that.
Now as to the disk-to-disk cloning operation...
Assuming your Dell replacement drive did not come with software to
accomplish this and no free software is available, are you agreeable to
purchasing one of the two disk imaging programs I previously mentioned, and
if so, which one?
Anna
angel said:
Anna, I will be replacing my system battery as well should I do that first
and boot my computer prior to installing my hd.
Anna, No I'm not bewildered thank you for asking, my hd from dell did not
come with anything no instructions nothing I wonder if I made a mistake
buying their product. Anyway I have it now so I guess I will use it, I
guess
I will buy acronis as it is recommended in this forum as being the best.
angel:
Since your new replacement drive is a Western Digital, perhaps the most
cost-effective way to proceed is to download a program from WD (available
from their website) which will allow you to undertake the cloning operation,
i.e., copying the entire contents of your old drive to the new WD drive. But
before getting to that, you'll need to connect (temporarily) your new WD
drive.
I assume you know how to gain access to your computer's components by
removing the case's side panel - the left one as you face the computer. You
probably will also have to remove the right panel in order to eventually
permanently install the new HD, but for the moment that should not be
necessary. PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU UNPLUG YOUR AC POWER CORD BEFORE UNDERTAKING
THE FOLLOWING...
What we want to do is to connect the new drive to an available IDE data
cable (commonly called a "ribbon" cable) connector and a power plug (usually
a "Molex" plug). Note how your present drive is connected to the ribbon
cable and power plug. It will basically be the same way when you connect the
new drive. Remember that we're *temporarily* connecting the new drive; after
the cloning operation we will permanently connect it.
Your new drive will arrive (most likely) jumpered Cable Select (CS). For the
moment leave it that way; we may later have to change the jumper setting.
From your description, it would seem that you have an available IDE
connector on the cable that's presently attached to your old installed
drive. The end connector (Master) is connected to that drive and there
should be a middle connector (Slave position) on that cable that's free.
It's that connector that you will use to connect to the new drive. It's
really not important *what* IDE cable connector is attached to the new drive
for this cloning operation to come. You could even detach one of the
connectors to your optical drives and connect that to the new drive for our
purposes if it was more convenient to do so. But if there *is* a free middle
connector on the cable going to the old installed drive and it's physically
convenient to connect to the new drive, use that one.
You'll need a box or some other contraption placed just outside the case on
which to place the new hard drive after you connect it to the data cable &
power plug as described above. A cardboard shoe box is fine. You just don't
want the drive to be dangling precariously from the cable connections, so
ensure that it's propped up reasonably well.
Please review the above and see if you feel comfortable about this
installation process. If you do, then we'll go on to the actual cloning
process using the WD utility. I'll provide you with information about
downloading, installing, and using that utility to clone the contents of
your old drive to the new one.
BTW, you mention you're planning to change your motherboard's battery. Is
there some reason for this? I assume your computer is not much older than
two years or so and ordinarily a battery change shouldn't be necessary. It
won't hurt, of course, assuming you correctly install the right battery, but
why are you doing so?
Anna
angel said:
angel:
If you're going to change the battery, it's probably wise to do so before we
get into the process we've been discussing. It's a possibility that the low
system battery voltage message you were getting was because of the failing
HD. May also be a "false alarm" since those system battery voltage testers
are notoriously inaccurate. But there's no harm in replacing the battery.
Just make sure the battery is specifically designed for your machine, OK?
Anna
P.S.
I'll shortly be sending you step-by-step instructions detailing the cloning
process.
angel:
Here they are...
The following instructions are for the Western Digital utility for setting
up the new drive and cloning the contents of the old drive to this new one.
But before doing so, let me say a few words about that program and my
experience with it.
I'm initially recommending this approach since your new drive is a WD and to
save you some money since the WD utility is free. But I have to tell you
that my experiences with this program (and similar ones from other HD
manufacturers) hasn't been totally positive by a long shot. Simply stated,
they don't always create bootable clones when they should be doing just
that. And it's not clear why. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. I
rarely, if ever, use these programs any more, much preferring to work with
Symantec's Norton Ghost 2003 or Acronis True Image, both of those fine
programs in my experience. The WD and similar programs are awfully slow in
the cloning process -- perhaps running at half the speed of the disk imaging
programs I mentioned. I realize that's not an important consideration for
you and other users who may be interested in creating only a one-shot clone.
But if you're going to use a disk imaging program in the future for routine
disk cloning for backup purposes, it's obviously an important consideration.
But the real problem (in my experience) is what I've previously stated about
the "crapshoot" nature of those programs in terms of consistently creating a
bootable clone.
Anyway, I guess it's worth a try in your case. The worse that can happen is
that the clone doesn't "take". And should that happen, we can discuss using
Ghost or Acronis. The setup of your drives will be the same, so the only
loss will be the time you initially spend with the WD program. Look at it as
a learning experience! So let's get started...
With both drives now connected, power up. But before doing so, make sure you
have no storage devices, e.g., jump drives, zip drives, etc., connected
*other* than the two hard drives.
1. Go to http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp?cxml=n&pid=999&swid=1
and download the Data Lifeguard Tools 11 for Windows. That file is in zip
format so that you will have to unzip it using the Windows XP unzipping
feature. I assume you know how to do this, right? You right-click on the
downloaded file and select Extract All from the sub-menu. Use the Extraction
Wizard that opens to extract the contents of that file. The newly-created
folder will have the same name as the downloaded file, but without the zip
file extension.
2. In the extracted folder will be a Setup.exe file. Double-click on that
file and run the installation program which will install the program in a
Program Files\Western Digital\Data Lifeguard folder. The final screen will
have checked the "Run Data Lifeguard Now!" checkbox. Click Finish.
(You may get a message asking whether you would like to setup your new WD
drive. Click Yes).
3. The next screen will have two options for "Installation Type". Select the
first option, "Add drive as additional storage device". Click Next.
4. Select the first option for the program to create and format partition.
Click Done.
5. On the next screen, select "Drive-to-Drive Copy".
6. Select your C: drive as the Source and the new drive's drive letter
(probably D: or E
as the Destination drive. It should be easy to identifythe Destination drive from the Browse for Folder window that opens after you
click the Browse button.
7. Click Start. A confirmation message box will open stating that all files
on the destination disk will be overwritten. Click Yes to continue.
8. The cloning process begins. It will be quite lengthy depending upon the
amount of data being copied.
(After the copy (cloning) operation has finished you may get a message that
the program was unable to copy a number of files. You can click on the Next
button and see a listing of those files together with the "Reason" the
program failed to copy them. The "reason" given is nearly always "Failed to
open destination file". In most cases it's nothing to be concerned about
since the OS will ordinarily re-create any necessary files upon bootup or
when they are needed. But not always. This is why I previously queried you
about whether the contents of your source drive was corruption-free.
Whatever problems exist will simply be copied over to the new drive. So if
you clone "garbage", garbage is what you'll get.)
9. Click Done and close the program.
10. Shut down the computer and disconnect the AC power plug.
11. Disconnect your old drive from the computer by removing its data cable
connection and power plug, but *don't* physically remove that drive from the
machine just yet since we want to make sure the clone "took".
12. If the new (hopefully, cloned) drive has been jumpered to CS as we
previously discussed and it's connected to the middle connector of the IDE
ribbon cable, leave it be for the moment.
13. Reconnect your computer's power and boot up. Hopefully you'll be able to
boot up to a Desktop with no problem. If it's successful, you may get a
message to reboot. Do so.
14. Assuming all is well, in that you have a well-working bootable clone,
power off. Remove the old drive, and after disconnecting the new drive's
data cable connection, install it in place of the old drive (there's no need
to change its power plug if the plug reaches in the new drive's new
position), and connect the old drive's data cable connector (I'm assuming
it's the *end* connector on the ribbon cable) to the new drive. I'm assuming
in all this that the other two devices - your optical drives - are both
connected on the Secondary IDE channel as you previously indicated.
15. You probably will have to remove the other side panel from your
computer's case in order to access the old drive so that it can be removed
as well as installing the new drive.
I trust all this is reasonably clear to you. The process is not particularly
complicated although it might look that way from my detailed instructions.
It's just that the first time you undertake something like this it can seem
overwhelming, so I've tried to give you as much detailed information as I
think you may need. Just take it step-by-step and don't rush it.
Let me know how it all works out. Good luck.
Anna