Cloning HD - Acronis True Image

  • Thread starter Thread starter JCH
  • Start date Start date
J

JCH

I want to upgrade to a newer and larger HD without having to reinstall
XP-Pro and all the updates and risk losing my settings. I was told that a
disk imaging software package (eg. Ghost, BooITNG, and True Image) would do
this. I couldn't get Ghost to even run but I had better luck with Acronis
True Image. Still, I'm not able to do what I wanted so maybe some one here
has done something similar and can walk me through it.
So far I've been able to take an image of my C: drive and restore that image
to the new HD. The files and structures appear to be intact. I've
disconnected the old C: drive and configured the new drive as a single
Master. However, I can not boot from the newly cloned drive. The process
will start and I can get past the black XP-Pro screen but the process hangs
on a subsequent blue XP Windows screen. No account names are shown. I can
repair this with the XP-CD (retail version) but this is what I'm trying to
avoid (having to reinstall Windows, updates, etc.).
Can I expect to be able to duplicate my C: drive (OS and all files and
programs) and boot from the new drive?? If anyone can help me with the
process I'd appreciate it.
Thanks.
JCH
 
Have you given Drive Image 2002 a try? I had this kind of problem using Ghost
2002 (or the version just previous to 2002--I don't recall which one for sure
now) on a Win2k machine. I tried Drive Image and it worked great.

The only other thing I can offer as a suggestion is to try and do a
sector-to-sector copy. I seem to recall that XP puts some data into a "hidden"
area of the drive that is not in the normal directory structure. Maybe these
software packages are missing that data.


Good Luck,

Paul
 
Paul,
I have not tried Drive Image yet but have seriously considered doing so.
Have you used it on a XP system? Were you able to switch to a new HD without
having to manually reinstall Windows?

Thanks,
JCH
 
JCH said:
I have not tried Drive Image yet but have seriously considered
doing so. Have you used it on a XP system? Were you able to
switch to a new HD without having to manually reinstall
Windows?
Click to expand...

I haven't used True Image, so won't try to guess what the problem may be. I
have used both Ghost and DriveImage successfully, although it's easier to
get into trouble with Ghost because it's "smarter" and sometimes makes
changes that it thinks you want. Both work well when the recommended
procedures are followed properly.

Before spending the money for DI, though, you might want to give BootIt NG a
try. I've also had good success with that, and since it's shareware you can
try it for free (30-day trial). If you can't make that work, you won't have
spent any money on it. And if you can make it work, then you can pay for it
and will have spend half of what DI costs.
 
No, I have not tried DI 2002 with XP yet. I have XP loaded onto an 80 GB HDD
and it is not quite half way full. I don't expect to need to go up to a larger
drive anytime soon. If this one starts to fill up, I have five more drive
connectors I can plug new drives into (even more if I want to add my SCSI card
or PCI IDE controller card into and expansion slot).

Paul

P.S. If I get a chance I will try and take a spare drive to copy my drive just
to see how well DI 2002 works and will let you know back here.
 
Good. If you are able to successfully make a bootable XP HD from copying an
existing XP HD using DI please let me know. Thanks. I still am looking for a
means to upgrade my HD to a larger one and not have to reinstall Windows. I
did this with ME no problem but XP is a different story. It would be
interesting to see if you can do it with DI.
 
JCH,
I just finished checking it out. Drive Image 2002 did successfully move from
the 80GB drive to a spare drive. The only problem encountered is that for some
reason the pagefile.sys file must have gotten scrambled some how. When I first
tried to open Internet Explorer, the home page would try and open but would just
sit there acting like it was always going out to re-download the page. Always
OE would say there was not enough memory to open this message I am replying to.

I went in and "reconstructed" the pagefile.sys and now everything is working
normally.

I am typing this reply from this the copy of the drive right now.

Paul
 
Paul - Let me make sure I understand. Using Drive Image you were able to
clone your primary bootable drive containing XP to another drive that BOOTED
up successfully? Did you have to go through any XP reinstall at all or did
everything (except for the pagefile.sys) transfer unaffected? This is good
news. I've tried this but can't get the new drive to successfully boot. I
like Power Quest products. I'll give Drive Image a try. Thanks. Please let
me know if my understanding is correct about your being able to boot up the
newly cloned drive. Thanks Paul.
 
No, I didn't do anything as far as reinstalling any software. All I did was go
into the change the Virtual Memory and played around with the values. I saved
the settings and rebooted the computer.

Paul
 
JCH said:
I want to upgrade to a newer and larger HD without having to reinstall
XP-Pro and all the updates and risk losing my settings. I was told that a
disk imaging software package (eg. Ghost, BooITNG, and True Image) would do
this. I couldn't get Ghost to even run but I had better luck with Acronis
True Image. Still, I'm not able to do what I wanted so maybe some one here
has done something similar and can walk me through it.
So far I've been able to take an image of my C: drive and restore that image
to the new HD. The files and structures appear to be intact. I've
disconnected the old C: drive and configured the new drive as a single
Master. However, I can not boot from the newly cloned drive. The process
will start and I can get past the black XP-Pro screen but the process hangs
on a subsequent blue XP Windows screen. No account names are shown. I can
repair this with the XP-CD (retail version) but this is what I'm trying to
avoid (having to reinstall Windows, updates, etc.).
Can I expect to be able to duplicate my C: drive (OS and all files and
programs) and boot from the new drive?? If anyone can help me with the
process I'd appreciate it.
Click to expand...

If you use FAT16/32 partitions here is a method I have used to clone
WinXP+SP1a
Note that this is Corporate XP and the system IS NOT dual/multiple
booting. The O/S is selected in BIOS

1) FDisk a new drive using FAT32 and a Win98SE boot disc and set the
partition active.
2) Format this new drive under WinXP, it doesn't seem to boot in XP if
you format under Win98SE and don't ask me why.
3) Under Win98SE move all the files from the source XP disc to the new
disc.
4) et Voila, it boots, works and SP1a and all your settings remain
unchanged.

However, you cannot remove the XP source disc from the system without
getting the error message "A problem is preventing Windows from
accurately checking the license for this computer 0x8009006".

If you must remove the source disc then fdisk /mbr using the Win98SE
boot disc and the above error message will go away and you have made a
perfect clone as far as I can tell.

Now if you use NTFS I would assume the above could be done by
substituting WinNT4/Win2000/WinXP for Win98SE and using the
appropriate fdisk utility. Someday I'll try.
 
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