Replacing Hard drive

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G

Guest

Hi

I am using XP Pro SP2
I have a Laptop with a 40G Hard Drive and want to change to a 80G,
I want to copy all of the files and programs onto the new Hard Drive without
reinstalling any of the programs, except for the operating system, if I have
to.

Is there some way I can do this?

regards
 
Daniel- Sydney said:
Hi

I am using XP Pro SP2
I have a Laptop with a 40G Hard Drive and want to change to a 80G,
I want to copy all of the files and programs onto the new Hard Drive
without
reinstalling any of the programs, except for the operating system, if I
have
to.

Is there some way I can do this?

regards
Click to expand...

If I was doing the same to my Compaq laptop I would use Ghost 2003 and
create an image to CD/DVD's or an external USB hard drive. Then change the
Hard Drive and restore the image.
 
KEKA said:
If I was doing the same to my Compaq laptop I would use Ghost 2003 and
create an image to CD/DVD's or an external USB hard drive. Then change
the Hard Drive and restore the image.
Click to expand...
Great, thanks for your help, I have Nortons Ghost, so that is what I will
do.

regards

Daniel
 
Most laptops have a hidden partition with the factory restore files on it.
Make sure you image the whole drive including this partition. When you
restore the image to the new drive keep this partition the same size.
 
Daniel said:
Great, thanks for your help, I have Nortons Ghost, so that is what I will
do.

regards

Daniel
Click to expand...

First and foremost, your version of Ghost must be able to access the media
you saved the image file(s) on.

If the laptop is in XP NTFS format (doubtful on a factory laptop), your
version of Ghost has to be able to create an XP version of NTFS (NTFS
version 3) partition for restoration. There also may a question of the MFT
and MBR restoration in some cases with older versions of Ghost regarding XP
and its version of NTFS.

Select all partitions on your current hard drive when making an image, not
just one, to backup the entire hard drive properly. Don't image each
partition separately. This may involve holding down the shift or ctrl key
and while selecting each partition.

Make the proper partition active during restoration, if that's an option.
Allow resize of the windows partition during restoration in order to make
full use of the larger capacity hard drive.
 
First and foremost, your version of Ghost must be able to access the media
you saved the image file(s) on.
Click to expand...

If he was able to access the media to create the image he will be able to
access that same media to restore the image.
If the laptop is in XP NTFS format (doubtful on a factory laptop), your
version of Ghost has to be able to create an XP version of NTFS (NTFS
version 3) partition for restoration. There also may a question of the
MFT and MBR restoration in some cases with older versions of Ghost
regarding XP and its version of NTFS.
Click to expand...

My 2 year old Compaq came with XP installed on an NTFS partition. Acer is
one of the few OEM's that installs XP on FAT32 partitions from the factory.
If the OP has Ghost 2003 NTFS is not an issue.
 
Thanks to all for your advice but I think it is too prone to probelms and to
me doing the wrong thing,

thanks
 
It may sound complicated but once you start actually doing it the procedure
is pretty straightforward.
 
Okay, I'm convinced, Ill give it a go,
I'm going to have to copy the Drive to an external drive and then copy it
back when I have installed the 80G
Hard Dive.
Will that work?

thanks

Daniel
 
Well I gave it my best shot, followed all of the direction
and when I put the 80G into my laptop it would not boot, I followed the
Symantec technicians advice and did a boot record restore to no avail, in
the end one Symantec tech hung up and the other left me hanging, so now I am
lost.

I know this is not a Ghost NG but any advice appreciated

regards

Daniel
 
Daniel said:
Well I gave it my best shot, followed all of the direction
and when I put the 80G into my laptop it would not boot, I followed the
Symantec technicians advice and did a boot record restore to no avail, in
the end one Symantec tech hung up and the other left me hanging, so now I am
lost.

I know this is not a Ghost NG but any advice appreciated

regards

Daniel
Click to expand...

These are the questions/thoughts of a former sysadmin; never used Ghost
so you might want to delete now...forgive me if this is way to basic.

It powers up but won't boot completely to the login window or safe mode,
or you turn on the laptop and the disk just spins? Is there another
laptop you can test it on? By any chance is external disk IDE and
internal SATA (or any other flavors) and this is a driver issue? Could
it be the bios problem where the HD wants to be defined as LARGE versus
AUTO? (found that one in a forum) Can you boot directly from the Norton
Ghost disk, maybe they have troubleshooting you can use with better
results than tech support?

If it gets ugly I hope you can take the low road (reformat, install XP
PRO, reinstall your apps and then restore from the external disk). Good
luck, I know this sux 'cause I been there and done that.

R Livingston
 
Thanks for the reply,
I'll digest it and follow any leads.
I'm off to work now

regards

Daniel
 
The other suggestion of formatting and doing a clean install will work but
is a little drastic at this point. When it wouldn't boot what error messages
did you see on the screen? Do you have a Windows CD? If you don't have a
Windows CD do you have access to another computer with a CD burner?
 
Hi Kerry

I did not get any error messages, simply nothing happened after the Laptop
powered up, by the way I did select "copy master boot record" as an option
when copying the files, I tried a repair install of XP, the OS was found and
the repair install went through but when it rebooted, once again nothing, the
Laptop shut down, powered up but the screen stayed black

I formatted the new HDD again and ran through the whole Ghost thing, but
still no boot, I ran the XP CD MBR but still nothing.

I formatted the HDD again and installed windows to see if it was the HDD
playing up but it booted fine.

I'm all out of ideas

cheers
 
R Livingston

thanks for your input, I went through it all an
I think I have covered all the issues, the BIOS does not have large option,
just auto and select, I tried both.
The boot just went to a black screen.

I do not have a Ghost boot disk as I installed as a part of Sysrem works disc,
I think I have done everything else as instructed.

thanks
 
KEKA said:
If he was able to access the media to create the image he will be able to
access that same media to restore the image.
Click to expand...

Not at all correct regarding the restore end of the 2 part process of
imaging / restoring. Basic beginner mistake.

Example: HP laptop two years old. Saving image to firewire drive. Occurs
in windows itself using imaging program. Yet, the boot media for image
restoration may not have the drivers for firewire the laptop uses. Can't
access restore media for restoration.
My 2 year old Compaq came with XP installed on an NTFS partition. Acer is
one of the few OEM's that installs XP on FAT32 partitions from the
factory. If the OP has Ghost 2003 NTFS is not an issue.
Click to expand...

See "doubtful on a factory laptop".

Older versions of Ghost don't understand SID, can't restore it as a result.
SID, and factory laptop OEM bios, no boot after restoration.
 
I haven't used Ghost since the 2003 version so I don't know if the problem
is because of Ghost or something else. Many laptops have a non-standard boot
sector to facilitate the "Press xx key" on bootup to start a factory
restore. With Acronis True Image I have found the following works when
imaging a laptop drive to an external drive. Make sure you select the drive
not a partition to image. When you select the drive it will select all the
partitions. When restoring you also have to pick the whole drive not just a
partition. When restoring you have to keep the factory restore/diagnostic
partition the same size as it was on the original drive. Any other
partitions can be resized during the restore. These instructions are
specific to Acronis True Image but I imagine Ghost works similarly. If all
else fails you can download the Ultimate Boot CD

http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

Use the MBRtool to write a new standard boot sector. This will probably
break the factory restore function but it will allow you to boot into XP on
the new drive.
 
Kerry and everyone that helped,

I just gave up, Symantec help gave up, leaving me hanging twice and hanging
up on me three times, and all my friends gave up, we tried everything and
nothing gave us a bootable HDD.
In the end we just reinstalled everything and copied the data files over.

But it was not all bad, the Ultimate boot CD is brilliant, thanks for the
heads up Kerry.

regards

Daniel
 
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