Replacing HD with larger one.

[Brian Tozer]

Does anyone have experience of creating an image of XP on a system,
replacing the HD with a bigger one, and then restoring the image to the new
larger HD?

I would hope to use Acronis TrueImage but would be interested in any other
experiences.

Or can anyone point me to an online article covering the procedure in
detail.

Thanks
Brian Tozer

 

[Patrick Keenan]

Does anyone have experience of creating an image of XP on a system,
replacing the HD with a bigger one, and then restoring the image to the new
larger HD?

I would hope to use Acronis TrueImage but would be interested in any other
experiences.

Or can anyone point me to an online article covering the procedure in
detail.

Thanks
Brian Tozer

I do this sort of thing pretty regularly. It's quite easy, but the route I
prefer to take is to pop the new drive in as the primary, set the original
to secondary, and use the imaging utility boot disk to clone the original
disk to the new one. Then, when I'm sure that the new disk is working
properly, I'll wipe the old one and set it up as extra storage for the
user, or simply remove it. If necessary, I'll disconnect one of the
pre-existing devices (like the CD) to make room for the hard drive
connections - only the hard disks are necessary for this and the process
doesn't care about the CD.

I also often use Maxtor disks (they are easy for me to get) and that lets me
use their free MaxBlast cloning utility. It's not fast, but it does work.

HTH
-pk

 

[Tech]

Try Norton Ghost from Symantec.

 

[Brian Tozer]

"Brian Tozer" wrote

I do this sort of thing pretty regularly. It's quite easy, but the route I
prefer to take is to pop the new drive in as the primary, set the original
to secondary, and use the imaging utility boot disk to clone the original
disk to the new one. Then, when I'm sure that the new disk is working
properly, I'll wipe the old one and set it up as extra storage for the
user, or simply remove it. If necessary, I'll disconnect one of the
pre-existing devices (like the CD) to make room for the hard drive
connections - only the hard disks are necessary for this and the process
doesn't care about the CD.

I also often use Maxtor disks (they are easy for me to get) and that lets me
use their free MaxBlast cloning utility. It's not fast, but it does work.

Thankyou very much Patrick for your reply which is so very apropriate for my
circumstances.
I have just bought 2 60 gig Maxtor HDs to give me a hands-on playing
environment, and have my 2 existing HDs on my multiboot system in racks for
easy swapping.
I downloaded Maxblast and attempted to do what I wanted with the new Maxtor
as a slave.
It was unsuccessful (and very slow) in my case, I think due to my cloning
from my XP partition which is I so I assume that had it been a simple
situation where my XP had been on C it would have been successful.
Are you in a position to tell me how I should have done it in this
situation?

Thanks
Brian Tozer

 

[Brian]

route lets work.

Thankyou very much Patrick for your reply which is so very apropriate for my
circumstances.
I have just bought 2 60 gig Maxtor HDs to give me a hands-on playing
environment, and have my 2 existing HDs on my multiboot system in racks for
easy swapping.
I downloaded Maxblast and attempted to do what I wanted with the new Maxtor
as a slave.
It was unsuccessful (and very slow) in my case, I think due to my cloning
from my XP partition which is I so I assume that had it been a simple
situation where my XP had been on C it would have been successful.
Are you in a position to tell me how I should have done it in this
situation?

I also did this recently and found MaxBlast3 very slow. It took about 2.5
hours.
I wanted to use the new HD as a true back-up in case of failure of the
primary HD so planned to update data on the new drive regularly. MaxBlast
only does a complete copy so I opted for a combination of Norton Ghost and
Acronis True Image. I run the Ghost cloning procedure once a month to ensure
that any system upgrades are copied and I use True image every couple of
days to update only modified files on the data partition.

Brian

 

[Brian Tozer]

"Brian Tozer" wrote

I also did this recently and found MaxBlast3 very slow. It took about 2.5
hours.
I wanted to use the new HD as a true back-up in case of failure of the
primary HD so planned to update data on the new drive regularly. MaxBlast
only does a complete copy so I opted for a combination of Norton Ghost and
Acronis True Image. I run the Ghost cloning procedure once a month to ensure
that any system upgrades are copied and I use True image every couple of
days to update only modified files on the data partition.

Hi Brian, are you able to go into a bit more detail re your procedure as I
am interested in doing the same thing.
Would you like me to give you a list of questions that I have?

Thanks
Brian Tozer

 

[Tim H.]

You might try Casper XP works great. You can download a trial version here
http://downloads-zdnet.com.com/3000-2248-10227557.html


Regards,
Tim

 

[Alex Nichol]

Does anyone have experience of creating an image of XP on a system,
replacing the HD with a bigger one, and then restoring the image to the new
larger HD?

I would hope to use Acronis TrueImage but would be interested in any other
experiences.

What I use is BootIT NG, from http://www.BootitNG.com ($35 shareware -
30 day full functional trial)

Download, to its own folder, extract from the zip, run the bootitng to
make a boot floppy.

With the new drive plugged in as slave/secondary, boot the floppy,
Cancel Install, entering maintenance, then click on Partition work.
Highlight your C:,Copy, then on left select the new drive (HD1) and
Paste.

You might then consider a resize up a bit. Or highlight the free space
remaining beyond, click Create choosing Extended partition to use the
rest of the space, then similarly in that to make one or more volumes
in that (to become drives D:, etc)

Now click on 'View MBR' and in it highlight the entry for this new C
partition and click the 'Set Active' Click 'Write Standard MBR' and
Apply. Also make a check that this partition is in the same place in
the table as it was if you do a View MBR on the old one - if not use the
Up or down to correct it.

Close out, swap the disks to make the new one the one that boots, and
reboot into XP.

 

[Brian]

Hi Brian, are you able to go into a bit more detail re your procedure as I
am interested in doing the same thing.
Would you like me to give you a list of questions that I have?

Sorry to say that I realise I was talking absolute crap. Acronis True Image
is a similar product to Ghost and is one of the packages that I considered
at the time I was making a selection. I do not even have it on my PC.
Alzheimer's must be setting in.
What I meant to say is that I use FileBack PC to back-up my data files.
Ghost will create compressed image files or clone a complete HD or just
individual partitions whereas FileBack PC can create selective back-up
images or copy selectively from one drive to another. FileBack PC is
available as a free download from www.maxoutput.com.
Because open system files are inaccessible, the cloning operation has to be
performed in DOS. Ghost therefore reboots the PC into MS-DOS or PC DOS (you
choose which), performs the cloning operation and reboots into Windows.
In my case, I have two partions on my primary HD (C: and D. I only have
system files on C: and put all data on D:.
Because system files are continuously changing during normal activity, plus
the fact that there are critical updates fairly regularly, I feel that
monthly re-cloning is desirable. I use Ghost for that purpose. That copies
C: and D: partitions on the primary HD to G: and H: on the back-up HD.
However, because I use my PC professionally, I am constantly updating my
data files. For that reason, I run FileBack PC daily to copy changed files
only from D: to H:.
In both cases, the procedure is self evident and easy.
I hope that answers any questions you may have wanted to ask.

Brian