Xcopy - can this clone a new hard drive from an old hard drive?

[Derek]

Dear Group,

Please can you help? I'm trying to install a new hard drive into a Dell PC
which has 2 hard drives, the primary is failing. Will xcopy clone
everything from the old hard drive to the new one? Would use the hard drive
manufacturer's tool, but original drives are Samsung and new drive is
hitachi, neither of which provide a "clone" utility, unlike Maxtor, Seagate
etc. Will never get Hitachi or Samsung until they do provide the utility.

Further info:
Windows XP Pro SP3,
Dell Dimension 5150,
2 x SATA 80GB Samsing hard drives, the primary is failing, secondary
contains Acronis True Image backup files.


New hard drive is a Hitachi 250GB SATA. Hitachi HDD is a pain because
Hitachi doesn't do a download utility which will clone the old disk (unlike
Seagate, Maxtor etc).

Acronis True Image - this on the failing hard drive. Backups have been done
sometimes on to the 2nd hard drive, I can see some TIB files there.

If xcopy fails then I plan to install Win XP Pro, Acronis True Image onto
the new 250GB hard drive, and then use Acronis to "restore".

Problems - failing hard drive will not let me login to windows. Getting
"winlogon.exe" failed, ODBC32.dll, ole32.dll, and then MSGINA.dll failure so
it won't authenticate logon, only offers to restart. F8 options are not
fixing this. Recovery Console is asking for a password, the user says there
is no password. Maybe msgina.dll and other files are getting trashed and
user info, so logon will no longer work?

Is there a better way?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Dear Group,

Please can you help? I'm trying to install a new hard drive into a Dell
PC which has 2 hard drives, the primary is failing. Will xcopy clone
everything from the old hard drive to the new one? Would use the hard
drive manufacturer's tool, but original drives are Samsung and new drive
is hitachi, neither of which provide a "clone" utility, unlike Maxtor,
Seagate etc. Will never get Hitachi or Samsung until they do provide the
utility.

Further info:
Windows XP Pro SP3,
Dell Dimension 5150,
2 x SATA 80GB Samsing hard drives, the primary is failing, secondary
contains Acronis True Image backup files.


New hard drive is a Hitachi 250GB SATA. Hitachi HDD is a pain because
Hitachi doesn't do a download utility which will clone the old disk
(unlike Seagate, Maxtor etc).

Acronis True Image - this on the failing hard drive. Backups have been
done sometimes on to the 2nd hard drive, I can see some TIB files there.

If xcopy fails then I plan to install Win XP Pro, Acronis True Image onto
the new 250GB hard drive, and then use Acronis to "restore".

Problems - failing hard drive will not let me login to windows. Getting
"winlogon.exe" failed, ODBC32.dll, ole32.dll, and then MSGINA.dll failure
so it won't authenticate logon, only offers to restart. F8 options are
not fixing this. Recovery Console is asking for a password, the user says
there is no password. Maybe msgina.dll and other files are getting
trashed and user info, so logon will no longer work?

Is there a better way?

Here is another way do "clone" a disk:

1. Connect the source & target disks to the secondary IDE controller
of some other Win2000/XP machine.
2. Partition & format the target disk.
3. Mark its primary partition as "active".
4. Use robocopy.exe or xcopy.exe to copy the source disk to
the target disk. Make sure to include all hidden files and folders.
5. Connect the target disk to the original machine. Leave the source
disk disconnected.

If no spare Win2000/XP machine is available then you can go through the
above steps by booting your PC with a Bart PE boot CD (which you would have
to manufacture).

 

[M.I.5¾]

Dear Group,

Please can you help? I'm trying to install a new hard drive into a Dell
PC which has 2 hard drives, the primary is failing. Will xcopy clone
everything from the old hard drive to the new one? Would use the hard
drive manufacturer's tool, but original drives are Samsung and new drive
is hitachi, neither of which provide a "clone" utility, unlike Maxtor,
Seagate etc. Will never get Hitachi or Samsung until they do provide the
utility.

Further info:
Windows XP Pro SP3,
Dell Dimension 5150,
2 x SATA 80GB Samsing hard drives, the primary is failing, secondary
contains Acronis True Image backup files.


New hard drive is a Hitachi 250GB SATA. Hitachi HDD is a pain because
Hitachi doesn't do a download utility which will clone the old disk
(unlike Seagate, Maxtor etc).

Acronis True Image - this on the failing hard drive. Backups have been
done sometimes on to the 2nd hard drive, I can see some TIB files there.

If xcopy fails then I plan to install Win XP Pro, Acronis True Image onto
the new 250GB hard drive, and then use Acronis to "restore".

Problems - failing hard drive will not let me login to windows. Getting
"winlogon.exe" failed, ODBC32.dll, ole32.dll, and then MSGINA.dll failure
so it won't authenticate logon, only offers to restart. F8 options are
not fixing this. Recovery Console is asking for a password, the user says
there is no password. Maybe msgina.dll and other files are getting
trashed and user info, so logon will no longer work?

Since you have True Image, why don't you just restore the saved image of
your old drive to the new one? Make sure you restore one made while the old
drive was working properly. Trueimage does have a clone utility, but like
XCOPY, it will fail to clone the drive properly if any part of the disk is
unreadable. I know XCOPY will halt at the first error, but I'm not sure how
Trueimage's clone copes with errors as I have never used it on a failing
drive.

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

Since you have True Image, why don't you just restore the saved image of
your old drive to the new one? Make sure you restore one made while the
old drive was working properly. Trueimage does have a clone utility, but
like XCOPY, it will fail to clone the drive properly if any part of the
disk is unreadable. I know XCOPY will halt at the first error, but I'm
not sure how Trueimage's clone copes with errors as I have never used it
on a failing drive.

It's actually the opposite: TrueImage will not go beyond an error but
xcopy will if you specify the /c switch.

 

[Derek]

It's actually the opposite: TrueImage will not go beyond an error but
xcopy will if you specify the /c switch.

Excellent posts, thanks.

Update:
Used my own Win XP Pro cd to get into windows, it eventually repaired for
now. Am backing up, then will swap the 2nd drive for the new drive and use
Acronis True Image to try to clone the original primary disk onto the new
disk.

Owner has since found their own Dell XP cd, so after this I will need to do
another repair from their CD and enter in their Win key. Any warnings or
info about doing this?

Thanks guys, keep the info coming!

 

[Touch Base]

"Owner has since found their own Dell XP cd, so after this I will need to do
another repair from their CD and enter in their Win key. Any warnings or
info about doing this?"

=====================================================

Hi Derek,
If all your doing is cloning from the old hard drive to the new, why do you
have to do a repair install? Not necessary.

Once the cloning is complete take the old hard drive out, put the new hard
drive in, make sure it is jumpered to be master and simply restart the
machine.

It should boot up as if nothing has changed because in reality it hasn't.

The only change was a new hard drive, no other hardware has changed and so
no repair is required.

Different if you had changed the motherboard and CPU for example.


--
Regards,
Touch Base
Report back on the results, good or bad so others may benefit

"There's an old story about the person who wished his computer were as easy
to use as his telephone. That wish has come true, since I no longer know
how to use my telephone."
(Bjarne Stroustrup)

 

[sgopus]

I think part of his problem is that he used the backup feature of TI, not the
clone feature, he stated that he has Acronis TIF backup files, not clone
image.
most likely these are old files, still usable but old.

 

[Derek]

Update for those who are interested.

After installing the "repair" using the owner's XP Pro cd and licence key
everything was working ok. I had been getting errors from AVG saying the
licence number didn't match, heh. Everything was working ok except for
Acronis True Image 9.

Contacted Acronis using the web-chat, the tech was swift and helpful. After
downloading the latest build of version 9 and installing it, everything
worked a treat.

Cloned the original 80GB with 3 partitions (2 of them hidden DELL
partitions) onto the new 250GB hard drive. There was approx 40GB of data on
the disk, and it formatted all partitions and cloned the disk faster than my
repair installation of Win XP had formatted the new hard drive. Approx 2x
to 3 x faster. Which is very impressive.

Cloning took a total of about 25 minutes. And it worked flawlessly. I
would recommend Acronis True Image, for the product and for the effective
web-chat support.

Thanks again group for all your help, and I hope that this post helps
someone else.

 

[smlunatick]

Update for those who are interested.

After installing the "repair" using the owner's XP Pro cd and licence key
everything was working ok.  I had been getting errors from AVG saying the
licence number didn't match, heh.  Everything was working ok except for
Acronis True Image 9.

Contacted Acronis using the web-chat, the tech was swift and helpful.  After
downloading the latest build of version 9 and installing it, everything
worked a treat.

Cloned the original 80GB with 3 partitions (2 of them hidden DELL
partitions) onto the new 250GB hard drive.  There was approx 40GB of data on
the disk, and it formatted all partitions and cloned the disk faster thanmy
repair installation of Win XP had formatted the new hard drive.  Approx2x
to 3 x faster.  Which is very impressive.

Cloning took a total of about 25 minutes.  And it worked flawlessly.  I
would recommend Acronis True Image, for the product and for the effective
web-chat support.

Thanks again group for all your help, and I hope that this post helps
someone else.

A re-install / repair install is known to "screw up" AVG's licensing.
You need to uninstall and reinstall it.