OT - moving windows XP to another drive

[Jules Richardson]

I think there are a few knowledgable XP folk here (I'm a Linux person, and my Windows expertise normally extends to knowing that I'll be pissed off within 15 minutes of having to use it ;-)

Anyway, wifey has an XP system on an old SATA drive, and I've got a shiny new 2TB drive for it to go on. Anyone have suggestions for cloning software - preferably free, preferably able to run from the existing[1] system (with the 2TB drive as a temporary second disk, to be swapped in as the main drive once the clone is done), and preferably not needing the XP CD[2] to get the 2TB drive into a bootable state afterwards?

I *think* EaseUS partition manager will do the job, but it'd be nice to hear some real-world experiences.

[1] I'm out of blank CDs, and it's a 16 mile trip to get any :-( [2] I have a kosher one for the machine, but IIRC it had a hefty scratch in it which didn't polish out all the way; it'd probably work, but I'd rather not have to rely on it.

(as for backup prior to doing this, I think the existing drive's "only" something like 120GB, so I can just temporarily drop it into one of my Linux machines and take a raw dd image in case of ensuing catastrophe)

cheers

Jules

[dennis]

I think

will do it. I used the version that was free on PCPro a couple of months ago to copy my laptop drive to a new disk.

[Bernard Peek]

gparted?

Put the new disk in as well and dd the old disk to the new one.

[fred]

In article , Jules Richardson writes

All the drive manufacturers have tools on their sites that make this sort of thing really easy. They are usually tied versions of Acronis disk tools which work well, it should be a piece of piss to partition and clone with one piece of software.

After the clone, do not reboot with the new drive in the box or you risk windows f'ckn it up. Power down and swap masters.

For info, my pref is to assign say a 80GB[1] system partition, a 20GB partition for swap file and temp use and keep a separate one for data.

If it's a WD drive then there may be more dicking around with reconfiguring their 'advanced formatting' to suit vanilla XP, just ask.

[1] or whatever size you need to fully clone the original, inc data, you can move it to the separate data partition later.

[Jules Richardson]

I might be able to - I've used it before a few years back, but that particular version is rather old and the associated boot kernel doesn't have any SATA support. There might be a 'modern' version on the ubuntu CD that I have, though (I tried ubuntu for all of five minutes a few months ago before deciding that I thoroughly hate it - but I don't think I tossed the disc out :-)

I didn't think it would work without some subsequent buggering around - hazy memory says that NFTS has some rudimentary knowledge* of the drive upon which it lives beyond simply treating it as a linear sequence of blocks, and XP will grumble and not boot from a straight-copied disk (cloning tools, presumably, rewrite these data structures accordingly)

XP CD recovery tools might well sort out a dd-copied image to make the OS bootable again, but see comment about my XP CD being less-than-healthy :-(

[John Rumm]

my favourite is Maxblast

one worth a go:

will clone and let you swap the disks...

[John Rumm]

Indeed - this is what Maxblast 5 is. If you don't have at least one seagate or maxtor drive in the system, type ALT + T, ALT + O at the error prompt and it will let you carry on anyway ;-)

[Chris Bartram]

Clonezilla bootable ISO.

[fred]

Ah, it was you! Couldn't remember who had posted that little gem (will try not to lose it this time).

The WD tool is def Acronis too.

[Jules Richardson]

Hmm, XP (via sysinfo under accessories menu) showed the current drive as

160,039,272,960 bytes (and XP's reported sector count * 512 matches that figure).

So, I plonked the drive in a spare Linux machine and ran dd to take a raw snapshot of it "just in case". Surprise - I got a file that was

160,040,803,840 bytes in size (and dd's record count * 512 matches *that* figure) - i.e. 2990 sectors (1530,880 bytes) more than XP claims it has.

So... why the discrepancy? Is XP just quirky about the way it reports drive size (and I can safely trust dd and the image that I created), or is there something more subtle at play?

(incidentally, smartctl under Linux - perhaps unsurprisingly - gives me the same disk size as dd... but even that's 2113 sectors shy of what WDC themselves claim)

cheers

Jules

[fred]

In the nicest possible sense, just get on with it ;-)

It's a clone, a source read only and the windows tools are so bldy idiot proof that you get many chances to avoid a screw up.

The final safety net would be that it would baulk if you tried to clone a 2TB to a 160GB as it wouldn't fit.

[PeterC]

EaseUS Todo Backup is probably the best one - I clone my HDD about once a month. With EasUS Partition Manager you need to be v. careful not to have the original disk attached when booting the new one; with Todo it doesn't seem to matter.

the on-line manual.

[tony sayer]

Why so often?..

[PeterC]

In case it goes titsup - back-up should be done daily, ideally, but ICBA.

[tony sayer]

Wouldn't some sort of RAID arrangement be simpler?..

[dennis]

Simpler yes, a reliable backup no.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Not really. I clone my hard disks once a day, thanks to the magic of RSYNC...

RAID is not a backup strategy: It is an availability strategy.

Backupo is nor archival either.

You have to decide what you are trying to achieve before you start selecting tools.

MY pressing need was to survive disk *failure*. So I have a lightly loaded server with lots of disk that snapshots the other kit once a day.

That covers me against accidental deletion for up to 24 hours as well. Something I have had reason to be grateful for..