KenK said:
Normally I'd back up C and system state with NTbackup, replace C with a
formatted one-partition drive, install XP Home from the MS XP Home install
CD, THEN restore backup. I sure wish there was a way to avoid the CD
install step and the likely annoying then-required phone call to MS
required because of drive change that I've read about.
Perhaps use an USB/IDE adapter I have with the formatted drive to restore
the backup to it. Then replace the old C drive with the restored drive. I
wonder if that would boot or does the install CD do something special to
the boot sector to make it bootable? Does anyone know?
TIA
The activation details are here.
http://aumha.org/win5/a/wpa.htm
Disk drives have several identifiers.
There's the physical serial number.
There's a number in the MBR, written during "disk signature". I think
that one may be in the MBR itself.
There is the volumeID of each partition.
The OS assigns those semi-randomly, but
you can restore that value if you want, with this.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897436
In terms of "weight", the details of the motherboard count for a lot
(like, NIC MAC address perhaps). Changing motherboards, would likely
require re-activating, even if other details hadn't changed.
If you're not changing the motherboard, there is a good chance
that just changing the drive won't tip it over. But exactly
what identifier or identifiers are used, it's hard to say. The
physical serial number sounds unimpeachable. Whereas the others
could be hacked (if you know what offset they're at).
If I "format" my C:, then a new VolumeID is assigned. I can use
the Sysinternals tool, to put back the original value. But
if I format C:, the other thing that gets lost, is the
partition boot sector. Using "fixboot" from the recovery
console, can fix that up.
And that's how I successfully move files off C: and back
on again. Using another OS, I can format the original C:,
use VolumeID to put the original value of that back, use
recovery console from the WinXP CD to get at the
"fixboot" program. Copy all the files back. And my C:
is more or less the same again.
If you use one of the backup tools which is VSS (shadow copy)
based, those generally get all of the details right for you.
The shadow copy, is supposed to copy every sector which is
used by the file system. Exactly how they figure that out,
I don't know. Presumably it requires a detailed knowledge of
how it all fits together, to back up just the sectors that
are in use. Other backup methods, such as NTBackup, don't
have that working for them, and are file-by-file methods.
And such methods will be missing out on all the metadata
that may be present (such as correcting a VolumeID or the
like). If I were to use Macrium Reflect Free to back up
my WinXP C:, chances are it would get all the details right.
And VSS built into the OS, would likely take a lot of credit
for it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volume_Shadow_Copy_Service
The designers of Macrium, did more work than that when
writing their software. If their backup tool is called
on to back up a "foreign" file system, they can still
do it, but then they use a sector-by-sector copy approach,
to ensure they get all of it.
The beauty of using VSS, is only the bits of the file
system that are in usage get copied, and you can then
compress those when writing out the backup, resulting
in a fairly compact backup image.
Using the ISO9660 CD image that comes with Macrium,
gives you something to boot the computer with, so you
can restore C: from your external backup disk. (That's
called "Bare Metal Restore", in terms of backup features.
A method that doesn't rely on your C: working, to do a
restoration.)
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
(An example of using it with a test Windows 7 setup...)
http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/4512/macriumrestore.gif
Paul
