HD upgrade and sysprep.exe

  • Thread starter Thread starter Gale Fly
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G

Gale Fly

I have two drives and need to upgrade C drive to larger one. I plan to use
Ghost (or some other utility) to clone the drive. I hope that I can use a
USB 2.0 IDE inteface (Drive Kit) for the cloning instead of physically
installing the new drive in the PC. Do I need to get sysprep.exe involved?
 
usasma said:
It's possible (I did it using Acronis True Image) as long as you've got
native support of USB devices on your motherboard. Here's some
instructions
on it: http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/moving_xp.html

If you intend to boot from the USB drive, the motherboard will need to
support "Boot from USB"

- John
Click to expand...


Gale Fly:
Yes, you can use Symantec's Norton Ghost program to perform the cloning
operation. The other program John mentions, Acronis True Image can also be
used. There are a number of "disk imaging" programs on the market that will
do the job.

I assume that when you refer to a USB "Drive Kit" you're referring to a USB
external hard drive. There should be no problem cloning the contents of your
internal HD to the external one. However, contrary to John's final comment,
you will *not* be able to boot from the USBEHD. As it stands at this moment
a USBEHD containing the XP operating system is not bootable, regardless of
whether the motherboard's BIOS presumably supports that capability. At least
we've never experienced that capability and we're unaware of any user who
has been able to boot a XP OS from a USBEHD.

However, if & when the time comes that you need to restore your system, you
can clone the contents of the USBEHD back to the internal drive and that
drive will be bootable.
Anna
 
Many thanks to both of you... I plan to use a device that provides an
external IDE to USB interface... Hard Drives, CD-Rom drives, etc. You can
easily remove and replace drives as you see fit. This particular one is
manufactured by some company named ADS Tech. They call it a "drive kit".If
it works as advertised then I had planned to clone my C: drive to the
external drive via USB and then remove the drive from the "kit" and replace
the current drive with the cloned one.

I have no intention of then using the replaced drive in another PC. IDE
drives are so cheap now that I will probably just discard the old one. Do
you think that this will work and, if so, will I need to run sysprep.exe and
with what parameters? I don;t think that the BIOS would have to be touched.

If it does work, wouldn't this be a neat backup scheme? I have used Ghost
and Drive Image for full (compressed) volume backups to large USB external
drives but have never tested the procedure to recover in case of a total
failure of the drive.

Thanks again, g
 
Gale Fly said:
Many thanks to both of you... I plan to use a device that provides an
external IDE to USB interface... Hard Drives, CD-Rom drives, etc. You can
easily remove and replace drives as you see fit. This particular one is
manufactured by some company named ADS Tech. They call it a "drive kit".If
it works as advertised then I had planned to clone my C: drive to the
external drive via USB and then remove the drive from the "kit" and
replace the current drive with the cloned one.

I have no intention of then using the replaced drive in another PC. IDE
drives are so cheap now that I will probably just discard the old one. Do
you think that this will work and, if so, will I need to run sysprep.exe
and with what parameters? I don;t think that the BIOS would have to be
touched.

If it does work, wouldn't this be a neat backup scheme? I have used Ghost
and Drive Image for full (compressed) volume backups to large USB external
drives but have never tested the procedure to recover in case of a total
failure of the drive.

Thanks again, g
Click to expand...


Gale Fly:
I accessed the ADS Tech site you mentioned. They list a "USB 2.0 Drive Kit".
Is this the "drive kit" to which you're referring? If so, that "drive kit"
*is* a USB external hard drive enclosure. You do understand this, don't you?
Assuming this is the device you'll be using - while you *could* remove the
cloned HD from the enclosure and substitute it for your internal HD. I
assume you would do this only in the event the internal drive became
defective and was no longer usable. Is that your basic objective?

But in the normal course of events you'll be using the USBEHD as a routine &
systematic backup device, right? So if your internal drive becomes corrupt
without being mechanically/electronically defective, your primary interest
would be to clone the contents of that EHD back to the internal drive for
restoration purposes, right? Under those circumstances there really wouldn't
be a need to physically remove the external drive from its enclosure and
install it in place of the internal one, would there? Unless for some reason
you wanted to.

So why not use that USBEHD in a more straightforward fashion? Use your Ghost
or other disk imaging program to *directly* clone the contents of your
internal working HD to the USBEHD. And should the need arise, *directly*
re:clone the contents back to your internal drive for restoration purposes.
There's no need to remove the HD from its enclosure under these
circumstances. If your internal HD fails, then you can use the external one
as a replacement.

You need not be concerned with using the sysprep.exe file. It has no
relevance in this situation.
Anna
 
Thanks again Anna,

My C drive is fine but I am running out of space. All I want to do with this
procedure is swap a 60gig drive for a larger one. I want to clone the drive
to the larger drive (temporarily installed into the "drive kit") and then
remove the C drive and replace it with the larger drive.

It makes sense to me but I am looking for advice from someone who knows more
about this than I to see whether or not I am missing something. And you
obviiously qualify. I thought that MS might have done something to protect
themselves from someone cloning a bunch of drives get around buying
licenses. That is why I was concerned with sysprep.exe. I will clean the
replaced drive of all data.

I appreciate your help, g
 
Gale Fly said:
Thanks again Anna,

My C drive is fine but I am running out of space. All I want to do with
this procedure is swap a 60gig drive for a larger one. I want to clone the
drive to the larger drive (temporarily installed into the "drive kit") and
then remove the C drive and replace it with the larger drive.

It makes sense to me but I am looking for advice from someone who knows
more about this than I to see whether or not I am missing something. And
you obviiously qualify. I thought that MS might have done something to
protect themselves from someone cloning a bunch of drives get around
buying licenses. That is why I was concerned with sysprep.exe. I will
clean the replaced drive of all data.

I appreciate your help, g
Click to expand...


Gale Fly:
In the final analysis, if all you want to do is merely transfer the entire
contents of your old drive to a new one and you're not interested in using
the USBEHD as a routine systematic device for backing up your system, then
you really don't need the USBEHD in this situation. It's simply overkill for
what you want to do.

Assuming you purchase a retail, boxed version of your new, larger HD, it
will include a disk-to-disk copying utility that you can use to clone the
contents of your old drive to the new one. If you purchase an OEM version of
the HD it will not come with that utility but you can download it from the
manufacturer's website in nearly every case. You simply connect the new
drive internally as a secondary drive and clone away; then connect it as
your primary drive. It's as simple as that.

Assuming you make no other component changes, activation of the OS will not
be necessary since you're using the new HD in the same machine.
Anna
 
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