Migration

[Guest]

Long story short, my hard drive is dying. I need to back everything up, so I
am getting an external hard drive. I will also be getting a new internal
drive. Now, all of my IDE channels are filled. Obviously I will take the
dying hard drive out once I have backed up my files. But how do I back up my
Windows XP Pro and it's account information without having to buy an
additional liscense? Can I back it up to the external drive, hook up the new
internal drive and just copy it back? Or do I have to remove one of my CD
drives to free up an IDE channel and hook the new drive up? Thanks

 

[Grant Robertson]

Long story short, my hard drive is dying. I need to back everything up, so I
am getting an external hard drive. I will also be getting a new internal
drive. Now, all of my IDE channels are filled. Obviously I will take the
dying hard drive out once I have backed up my files. But how do I back up my
Windows XP Pro and it's account information without having to buy an
additional liscense? Can I back it up to the external drive, hook up the new
internal drive and just copy it back? Or do I have to remove one of my CD
drives to free up an IDE channel and hook the new drive up? Thanks

Your best bet is to buy a HDD imaging / disk-to-disk copying program like
Ghost. Put the new HDD in place of your second CD for now. (Make sure you
set the Master/Slave jumpers correctly.) Use the software to make an
exact copy of the old disk to the new one. Yank out the old disk and move
the new one to it's place. (changing the jumpers as necessary) Your PC
should just boot right up. Windows may say it has recognized new hardware
(the drive) and ask you to reboot. After that it should all be just as
normal and you can put your second CD back in.

If your old drive is failing as we speak then you may have trouble
getting ALL of the data off of it using Ghost. In that case have Ghost
make an image to your external drive while turning off any error checking
and empty sector skipping. You want Ghost to take everything EXACTLY as
it sees it. This will create a huge image file but it is just a temporary
backup. Now get SpinRite (www.spinrite.com) and use it to scan your old
disk. It may take hours and hours or even a day but it can make data
readable that isn't readable by any other means other than professional
recovery services. After SpinRite is finished take another crack at the
disk-to-disk copy.

Now, just for good measure do a Recovery Install. I only recommend this
if you actually had bad sectors on your HDD. It will replace all the
Windows files with fresh copies while leaving all your programs and files
intact. Search for 'Recovery Install' on the MS web site for more
information. If you do do it you will then need to reinstall any service
packs and updates but that is a small price to pay for a reliable system.