New Hard Drive Cloning

[Guest]

My hd recently crashed. While waiting for the new one to arrive, I used the
recovery
cd and set up an old drive. I have downloaded all the updates and installed
SP2 and now want to clone it to the new drive. Old drive is maxtor, new is
WD. I muddled through partitioning and formatting the new drive, but how do
you xfr the system files to make it bootable ? There is no SYS command as
there was in DOS or previous Windows OS's. Also, I installed MaxBlast & WD's
tool and both run fine
with the Maxtor connected, but with both drives connected, both programs crash
when started. I tried a REPAIR install using fixmbr and fixboot and got the
drive to boot, but when I used BACKUP to restore a backup of the maxtor, the
new drive refuses to boot saying there are missing files. What a PAIN !!!

 

[Kerry Brown]

Are both drives reconized in the BIOS when they are both connected? It
sounds like a jumper problem. How big is the new drive? It may be a BIOS
limitation if the new drive is larger than 137 MB. Try hooking each drive up
to a seperate channel. i.e. Unhook your CDROM and hook up one of the drives
to the secondary channel and one to the primary channel.

Hope some of this helps.

Kerry Brown
KDB Systems

 

[Guest]

Does the WD have disk cloning software such as Maxtools?

If so use their product to clone off the Maxtor to the WD.

From my experience the Maxtools will only write to a Maxtor drive: part of
the built-in restrictions.

Once you have cloned a drive and attempt to boot of the new WD, you will
find that XP wll not load and that you'll have to perform a REPAIR
installation of XP.

If you can't do any cloning, start fresh: format the WD and 'recover' XP to
the new WD.


By the way, if the recovery CD is from Toshiba, Dell etc, then I'm amazed
that it will allow you to write onto the new drive, being different from the
OEM spec. This is part of the 'protection' policies in XP.

You may need to go one step further and buy a Retail Version of XP: or call
the HDD supplier and see if they can supply you with a 'White Box' OEM
edition of XP. This is acceptable under the OEM agreement Ts & Cs being a
significant system component.

 

[Kerry Brown]

By the way, if the recovery CD is from Toshiba, Dell etc, then I'm amazed

that it will allow you to write onto the new drive, being different from
the
OEM spec. This is part of the 'protection' policies in XP.

I have installed many new hard drives on Toshiba, Dell, etc laptops and
desktops. Some of the manufacturers lock the recovery CD to their own BIOS
but I've never seen one locked to a particular brand or model of hard drive.
Sometimes you have to partition the drive first, sometimes partition and
format, sometimes do nothing. It takes a bit of experimentation. It would
not be in the manufacturer's interest to lock a recovery CD to a hard drive.
They often use different brands of drives during production of a model due
to availability, price, etc.

Kerry Brown
KDB Systems

 

[Guest]

The mfgs software will not clone xp 99.9% of the time,theyre only good for
previous windows OS.To clone youre new drive to C:,simply format the hd
with a primary partition,set as slave on the same IDE chain,then go to run,
type:XCOPY C:\*.* D:\ /c/h/e/k/r D: being the slave,but substitute if
asigned
a diffrent letter,agree to all in the DOS window.When the DOS window closes,
youre thru.

 

[Guest]

I cloned my drive using Max Blast 3. I have done it once before. I went on
a website that told me what folder to move manually so that my programs would
work. I have forgotten what folder that is. I currently have many programs
telling me they are missing and then are all of the sudden working. I also
show many programs missing the icons.

thanks,