How do I clone my 'c' drive for the next failure

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Old Timer

This may be the wrong newsgroup to ask this question but if it is please
point me in the correct direction. My computer has crashed many time & most
components have been replaced at one time or the other. The current problem
is hard drives. I have had a 120GB Seagate fail & been replaced twice as
well as a 80GB Quantum fail as well. The Quantum had been failing again
recently so that when I turned on my machine the boot up sequence stopped
with error 'hard disk failure press PF4 to continue.' This came so
frequently that I have replaced this drive with an new 120GB Western Digital
onto which I have had to reload all of my programs for about the 20th time
in the past couple of years. After one week I had the same message happen
on the brand new drive 'hard disk failure press PF4 to continue'. I have a
couple of drives available in swapable caddies.

Since my machine now has 2 drives in it, both of which has several
partitions, & one of these drives is in a removable caddie I was thinking
along the lines of using one of the software packages to clone my 'c' drive
as a backup for when the next big failure happens. I have programs
available like, Partition Magic 8 available as well as Norton's Utilities
2003 which has both Ghost & some other backup or mirror imaging program in
it but I haven't a clue as to how to use either program. I was hoping to
clone my 'c' drive & keep this in a partition on the swapable drive until it
was needed for a system restore. But wouldn't I also need to have something
extra so as to be able to boot to this swapable drive or do I change the
BIOS? Please point me in the correct direction of the appropriate newsgroup
so that I can ask the question for a second time if necessary.


Thanks in advance

Remove the XXX to reply
 
-----Original Message-----
This may be the wrong newsgroup to ask this question but if it is please
point me in the correct direction. My computer has crashed many time & most
components have been replaced at one time or the other. The current problem
is hard drives. I have had a 120GB Seagate fail & been replaced twice as
well as a 80GB Quantum fail as well. The Quantum had been failing again
recently so that when I turned on my machine the boot up sequence stopped
with error 'hard disk failure press PF4 to continue.' This came so
frequently that I have replaced this drive with an new 120GB Western Digital
onto which I have had to reload all of my programs for about the 20th time
in the past couple of years. After one week I had the same message happen
on the brand new drive 'hard disk failure press PF4 to continue'. I have a
couple of drives available in swapable caddies.

Since my machine now has 2 drives in it, both of which has several
partitions, & one of these drives is in a removable caddie I was thinking
along the lines of using one of the software packages to clone my 'c' drive
as a backup for when the next big failure happens. I have programs
available like, Partition Magic 8 available as well as Norton's Utilities
2003 which has both Ghost & some other backup or mirror imaging program in
it but I haven't a clue as to how to use either program. I was hoping to
clone my 'c' drive & keep this in a partition on the swapable drive until it
was needed for a system restore. But wouldn't I also need to have something
extra so as to be able to boot to this swapable drive or do I change the
BIOS? Please point me in the correct direction of the appropriate newsgroup
so that I can ask the question for a second time if necessary.


Thanks in advance

Remove the XXX to reply
Click to expand...

The problem sounds like something other that hard drives.
They may truely be getting smoked, most likely from a bad
power supply. Look at that before getting another drive.
a good surge protector, not just a power strip is
recommended also. Don't get offended, you would be amazed
at how many people have their $1500 systems plugged into
1.50 wal-mart special. if you didnt pay at least 15.00
for your power strip it most likely is not a surge
protected power strip.
you also did not say what your machine stats are.
knowing that can help alot.

The answer to your question reguarding the swap of drives
is to back up your system at least once a week.
you can back it up to a hard drive on your system, then
simply unplug the back up drive drive. make sure the
drive is set to be a slave, and set so that it is not
active. when you format the drive make sure you copy the
system files to it.
 
The PC is only about a year old & has an new power supply. I have a Pentium
4 2GB with 512 ram. The machine is plugged into quite a good surge
protector.

Just backing up my settings isn't the option I wish to pursue since I would
still have to reinstall all of my programs etc.
 
Old Timer said:
This may be the wrong newsgroup to ask this question
but if it is please point me in the correct direction. My
computer has crashed many time & most components
have been replaced at one time or the other. The current
problem is hard drives. I have had a 120GB Seagate
fail & been replaced twice as well as a 80GB Quantum
fail as well. The Quantum had been failing again recently
so that when I turned on my machine the boot up sequence
stopped with error 'hard disk failure press PF4 to continue.'
This came so frequently that I have replaced this drive with
an new 120GB Western Digital onto which I have had to
reload all of my programs for about the 20th time in the past
couple of years. After one week I had the same message
happen on the brand new drive 'hard disk failure press PF4
to continue'. I have a couple of drives available in swapable
caddies.

Since my machine now has 2 drives in it, both of which has
several partitions, & one of these drives is in a removable
caddie I was thinking along the lines of using one of the
software packages to clone my 'c' drive as a backup for
when the next big failure happens. I have programs available
like, Partition Magic 8 available as well as Norton's Utilities
2003 which has both Ghost & some other backup or mirror
imaging program in it but I haven't a clue as to how to use
either program. I was hoping to clone my 'c' drive & keep
this in a partition on the swapable drive until it was needed for
a system restore. But wouldn't I also need to have something
extra so as to be able to boot to this swapable drive or do I
change the BIOS? Please point me in the correct direction of
the appropriate newsgroup so that I can ask the question for
a second time if necessary.
Click to expand...


Try posting in comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage . There are
a few hard disk drive experts there, some of which are actually
different pseudonymns for the same sick guy, but if you keep
your emotions in check and just accept facts, you should be able
to stomach his outbursts.

You will probably get two categories of responses: Check your
power supply, and Check your case cooling. Any decent power
supply, especially one for a PC, is regulated. If the regulation is
getting flaky, it could cause the component failures you've been
seeing. Same for inadequate cooling.

As for imaging software, Norton Ghost, PowerQuest Drive Image,
are supposed to do byte-for-byte copying (as opposed to file-for-file
or record-for-record copying). PowerQuest Partition Magice says
it can copy a partition - but I don't know if it's a byte-for-byte copy.
If you use Drive Image, use the DOS version, Drive Image 2002,
if you can. The Windows version, Drive Image 7.0 seems to be a
bit "sensitive" to its environment. For me, it has been a downright PoS.
Most of the guys who hang out at comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
use Ghost, perhaps only by force of habit.

Tomas B.
 
Well, oldtimer, older than me? (62!).

Anyway, I pretty well agree with anonymous. Power supplies are cheap.
Swap it out for a new one. Having said that, about 20% of the
machines I look after have hard drive failures every year. They are
not very reliable.

It's easier and much faster to back up and restore to a hard drive
than CDs. Use your removable racks for your hard drives. One caution,
my racks don't work with cable select so move the hard drive jumpers
to the master or slave position.

You are right that you can get into trouble with drive letter
assignments with drives if you are not careful, and the clone will
either not boot because it thinks it is drive D: or has no swap file,
or Windows will not boot with WPA problems, The easiest way to avoid
this (not the only way) is just use your racks with the current
Windows system on the primary controller master position and the
backup (clone) as secondary master. I prefer to not have the secondary
partiton(s) visible from the current system. That is handled through
the windows Disk Manager. It is not complicated - just take your time
with it.

If you have to use the clone, then switch it to the primary controller
rack. The windows partition has to be active for it to boot. You can
check/make the partition active in Disk Manager or the old DOS fdisk.

This is the easiest, foolproof method to backup the system.

Norton Ghost 2003 is extremely easy to clone with. Just start it, go
to Advanced (a misnomer) and Clone. Just triple check that you have
selected the right source and target. I always name the target
partition "target" as you don't want to overwrite your working
installation.

To keep all your points for WPA (activation), make a note of the
volume ID (VOL from a DOS prompt) and change the clone ID to it with
volumeid (I think from winternals.com but you can Google for it)

HTH,

Peter Kaufman MCP
 
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