laptop harddrive bad/usb backup

  • Thread starter Thread starter Eric
  • Start date Start date
E

Eric

Hello,

I have a laptop which has a drive that is dying a slow death. It is
under warrantee so I have a new one in route to replace it. They are
sending me the same size but it is a different model (and
manufacturer). I would like to copy my exisiting setup to the new
drive.

I also have a very large (larger then the drive I am replacing) USB
drive. I have made a backup of my entire dying disk onto the USB
drive, using Windows XP Backup Utility, and it also generated a
floppy.

Can I boot off this floppy with the USB drive attached and the new,
blank drive in the system and restore to the new disk? If not, is
there another way to restore the old disk's contents to the new drive.
If not, is there any way to copy the data from the old drive to the
new one and not have to reinstall everything from scratch?

Thanks,

-ks
 
Whether you can boot directly from the USB drive is up to the motherboard
BIOS.... what you can do if you have XP Pro is use ASR... the Automatic
System Restore Wizard.

It does sound like this is what you have used......

To get everything to the new drive....once it's arrived and is
installed.....

Boot with the XP CD and at some point, you'll see Press F2 to use ASR.
Ensure you have the floppy in the floppy drive. It will look at that floppy
and find out where the backup file actually 'lives'. It will then partition
and format the new (internal) hard drive and using the information it got
from the floppy drive, find the backup file on the USB external drive, and
completely copy it to the new internal hard drive.

Used correctly (ie with a secondary hard drive or a single hard drive
partitioned into at least one other partition) ASR is a lifesaver.
 
Just a note. I want to make sure you didn't use the File and System
Transfer Wizard. I have never seen this create a floppy to use, but I
just wanted to make sure. Using this Wizard will not keep your
applications or the OS, just the settings and a few files like My Documents.

ASR is the best route to go here, but you can also try a hard drive
imaging software program as that will work too (in case ASR doesn't work).
 
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