The main snag is reinstalling programmes. If you clone, you don't have to reinstall anything.
Windows accumulates a load of crud over time, so a change of hard disk is a great opportunity to do a clean re-install of everything.
Yes - understood - backups are in place already!
Don't think so - ntfs on both disks Thanks
With the old drive in the computer, and the new one in a USB caddy, use the options in XXClone to make the new drive bootable, I can't remember exactly where it is, but that's how I did it on both this and the other laptop.
There's already a lot of guessing going on in your replies, some more likely than others, but really booting is relatively complex process, and you need to understand each step of it to work out exactly what's going wrong, otherwise any attempted fix could very easily make things worse.
I have given a description of the boot process on my site here:
In summary, it's:
BIOS chooses disk according to its settings which you can change
-> Disk is expected to have MBR and partition table in the its very first sector (you may be missing the MBR, in which case going into a Windows Recovery Console and giving the command FIXMBR will create it)
-> MBR reads the partitiion table* and selects the first active partition to boot. It then tries to boot that partition.
-> Partition is expected to have a suitable PBR in its very first sector, which will load and run the OS in an OS-specific way. (You may be missing the PBR in which case FIXBOOT in the RC will create one)
With both FIX???? commands, you need to get the parameters right if there are more than one disk or partition containing an OS, details are in the online help from the Start Menu in, AFAIAA, every Windows installation, and also in the RC itself by typing HELP. It would be foolish to try and guess from your description above what the parameters need to be, so that must be up to you.
Yes, IIRC correctly that's right. I don't think you can boot directly into a logical partition except via a suitable bootloader such as GRUB or LILO that come with Linux, but right now I'm struggling to remember exactly why that is. I think it must be that the logical partition lacks a loader to link between the MBR of the disk and the PBR of the bootable partition it contains.
If after checking the above points, you decide that the logical partition is the problem, you could try booting into a Linux Live CD and using some of the tools suggested by others. Or just reclone the disk and ensure that you create a system partition this time around.
I would say that it only accumulates crud if you let it. I've had essentially the same build since 2004, with one major revamp in 2007. Both P4s are running the original W2k version, and this laptop is running the version upgraded to XP.
The >
I've found Drive Image XLM to work best here. And best too if you can have the disc you want cloned not being used as the system one at the time. Like remove it and put it in another working machine, then clone it there.
reinstalling programs is so damned simple on Linux anyway.
Just select them and click 'apply'
Or install Linux..
Interrupted by a realisation that you are missing a licence key or an install disc for something.
Precisely what I was hoping to avoid...
Anyway - update...
Clonezilla did a good job, but (because I told it to) it copied the
240Gb old windows drive to a 240Gb partition on the new 1Tb drive.Downloaded a prog off the web for free (can't remember its name - PartitionWizard or somesuch) and asked it to expand the partition for me. PC rebooted, the program did its work, and rendered the volume unusable. grand! Thanks!
So... set Clonezilla to work again, this time in 'expert' mode (Are you sure that's wise, Cap'n Mainwairing ?) and it re-cloned the small disk to the large disk, this time creating a nice big partition on the new disk. The new drive then booted OK.
Original drive was quite badly fragmented - which is presumably why XXCLONE spent so long over the copy (5 hours) as it also defrags on the fly. Now defragging the new disk under windows xp, and hoping that tomorrow is a better day.
Thanks all for your help & comments G'night!
I wouldn't say that I am very organised, but even I make a copy on the HDD of all my install disks and license keys.
WELL DONE!
With a little help from my friends!
As I say - Clonezilla made a an exact copy of the old disk - which defragged overnight. On looking at the defrag result this morning, it still looked a bit untidy, so I asked defrag to re-analyse the new disk, and, sure enough, it's having a second 'pass' at it... (but going a bit faster this time!)
Have to put the case back on the pc later - and decide what to do with the old 250Gb hard drive. Might stick it back in the case and use it for 'internal' backups, rather than the motley collection of small usb-connected drives I have been using.
Seems a shame just to stick it in a cardboard box in the loft along with ten or so other 'upgraded' hard drives, ranging from 10Mb up..
Thanks again - I'd have been stuck without uk-diy
PM is getting a bit long in the tooth now... a GParted live CD works well though.
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