Best way to copy HD?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bobby
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Bobby

I have purchased a new HD - and now facing the usual problem about copying
everything onto my new drive.

I want to copy my PATA 120GB drive (with two partitions) to a new SATA 250Mb
drive (I also want to create two partitions on this drive). SATA drives are
jumperless, right? So I just connect the new drive to my PC - and voila?

I have Norton Ghost v9 so I presume that this is OK to use?

Does anyone have any advice before I do this?

Cheers.

Bobby
 
Bobby, I would go to the Manufacturers website and see what they have
first. Ghost will work fine though. Depending on
how old your System is Read the Installation Instructions for the drive.
 
Bobby said:
I have purchased a new HD - and now facing the usual problem
about copying everything onto my new drive.

I want to copy my PATA 120GB drive (with two partitions) to a
new SATA 250Mb drive (I also want to create two partitions
on this drive). SATA drives are jumperless, right? So I just
connect the new drive to my PC - and voila?

I have Norton Ghost v9 so I presume that this is OK to use?

Does anyone have any advice before I do this?
Click to expand...


Ghost 9.0 is the world's most-used (although the PC mags give
the latest version of Acronis' True Image the nod). Just be sure
that you have Microsoft's .NET Framework installed so Ghost 9.0
will work. Assuming that Ghost 9.0 works like its predecessor,
Powerquest Drive Image 7, you can make the new partitions using
Ghost, and you can tell it how large to make them and what to
name them. Make the partition that is to contain the boot files
(i.e. boot.ini, ntldr, ntdetect.com, etc.) "primary" and "active".
This partition is usually the same partition that will contain the
O.S. unless you want to do fancy multibooting.


The following assumes that Windows XP is the O.S.:

After you're done with the copying, and before you boot up the
new OS for its 1st time, disconnect the old HD so that the new OS
cannot see the old OS (its "parent"). By disconnecting the old HD,
you also remove it from the BIOS's hard drive boot order, so the
new HD will be the boot drive. Then boot the new OS. Then shut
down. If you boot the new OS for the 1st time with its "parent"
visible to it, it will forever after be dependent on the presence of
its "parent" to function right.

Now you can re-connect the old HD, and adjust the boot order
in the BIOS (if need be) to put the new HD at the head of the boot
order. Then boot up the new HD. The old HD partitions will be seen
as "Local Disks" with new letters for their names. You can either
reformat those partitions using Disk Management and then use
them for extra storage or you can keep them as archives of your
old files for awhile. If, for some reason, your new SATA drive
fails, you can boot the old OS by reversing the boot order in the
BIOS (if the new HD is still visible to it) or by simply removing the
new HD.

You can continue to back up your entire new OS by making
clones to the old HD, and you can boot directly to any of them
by adding entries in the boot.ini file of the "active" partition in the
HD that is at the head of the boot order (i.e. the new OS's partition).
Of course, you can add entries in the boot.ini of ALL the OSes,
and by changing which partition is "active" (using Disk Management),
you can use the boot.ini file and the boot loader (ntldr) in any OS's
partition.

*TimDaniels*
 
Tim - Thanks v much for a super explanation.

Cheers. I'll buy you a drink next time you're in Glasgow. :-)

Bobby
 
You're both welcome. A good newsgroup to lurk in for
hard drive info is:

comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage

*TimDaniels*
 
Since Bobby's question involved a SATA with a PATA
hard drive, I didn't say anything about re-doing the jumpers
after the new HD is booted for the 1st time. Instead, I just
mentioned readjusting the boot order in the BIOS. If you're
using two PATA drives, you can control the default boot
order with the jumpers since the default order is:
Master on Primary channel, Slave on Primary channel,
Master on Secondary channel, Slave on Secondary channel.
Given this default boot order, you can make the new HD
boot ahead of the old HD by making the new HD "Master"
and the old HD "Slave". Of course, this can be overridden
by manually setting the BIOS's hard drive boot order yourself.
In fact, since I have a PCI controller for my hard drives, I
find that I have to readjust the boot order in the BIOS every
time the HDs are changed because the PCI card itself
moves around in the boot order, so diddling in the BIOS is
standard procedure whenever I shift the HDs around.
Checking the BIOS's boot order as a matter of course is
probably a good idea for anyone since you will always
know which HD will be the boot drive.

A handy thing to do, BTW, if you have a clone OS that you
can multiboot is to put a folder on the Desktop with a name
that reflects which OS it is. Then when the OS is started,
you can tell by looking at the Desktop which one it is.

As you get further along with HD cloning and multibooting,
you will find that the partition on the HD that is marked "active"
and therefore the one given control by the BIOS, needn't be
the partition that contains the OS. In fact, the partition that
contains the OS may be even on another HD! This is because
the boot.ini file may point to partitions other than itself and
even partitions on other HDs, and ntldr just obediently goes
ahead and loads the OS that boot.ini points to. And, perversely,
Microsoft in its documentation refers to the partition with the
boot files (i.e. boot.ini, ntldr, ntdetect.com, and in some cases,
others) the "system partition". And the partition that contains
the OS itself, Microsoft calls the "boot partition". In fact,
these are the meanings of those terms as used by the
Disk Management utility in WinXP. (Rt-clk on My Computer,
lft-clk on Manage, lft-clk on Disk Management.) It's totally
counter-intuitive, but that's Microsoft.


*TimDaniels*
 
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